


Playboy

by bunnoculars



Category: SHINee
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Switching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:07:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 88,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24824323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnoculars/pseuds/bunnoculars
Summary: It’s December 2025. Years after his last comeback, Taemin is in talks with SM to record a new album. Growing “old” has thrown his personal and professional life into limbo, as priorities have shifted for both the company as well as the people closest to him. His one constant is Jonghyun, right up until they cross a line they’ve spent fifteen years not crossing.
Relationships: Kim Jonghyun/Lee Taemin
Comments: 105
Kudos: 176





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn’t planning on posting this until I completed it, but it’s ending up way longer than it was supposed to be, and squeezing writing it in between updating my current WIP was feeling increasingly untenable. I do plan to continue working on them concurrently (just to be clear, this story was meant to be a break from my WIP, which I remain just as committed to!), but my hope is that being transparent about what I’m writing will be much less stressful for me haha. I have completed the second part as well but will wait a week or two to post that, since it’d be a lot all at once, and beyond that, I will post as I write.
> 
> Anyway, I don’t often do these kinds of AU’s, but I’ve been wanting to write a fic set in the twilight of their careers for a while (and trying to figure out how to turn Playboy into a Jongtae song for even longer lol). The months of silence and confusion surrounding Taemin’s comeback also put me in a not-so-great headspace about what things might be like for them under SM in the future, and got me thinking how he might feel as an older idol, especially since he’s poured so much of himself into his career. I feel like I’m making this story sound so much deeper than it actually is, though haha – it’s basically just porn stitched together into this (very, very) self-indulgent Taemin…fix-it? type thing. It’s also the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever posted, but hopefully you guys can get some enjoyment out of it!
> 
> Just as a side note, it was really tough to imagine what a Taemin comeback in the future might look like, and I have faith that whatever he comes up with will be millions of times better than what I did. I just had to put something down haha. 
> 
> Also, I would like to apologize to a long-time reader – I know I said that I would try bottom!Jjong the next time I wrote porn, and I’m sorry for breaking my word here. I haven’t forgotten and I am still planning on writing it!

_cant make it._

The message doesn’t look any different in the sunlight than it did under the glare of SM’s fluorescent lights, but at least Taemin can breathe out here. Deep, deep breaths, winter air exploding in his lungs, biting into his fingers, freezing his face until the expression he’s been wearing all day cracks and shatters into a million pieces. Too bad he can’t stay just stay up here. Creative probably wouldn’t care if he never came back, they could have the meeting without him there, but he forgot his coat, and Jongin sucks at being his excuse to get away. Really.

_sorry, taemin-ah_

_yena got time off after all_

_some other time, okay?_

There’s nothing left for Taemin to say, but he can’t not respond. _OK._ Or _have fun^^,_ or _dont be sorry, ill probably have more fun than you anyway~._ Or just _i understand._

That’s all it would take, which doesn’t explain why he’s calling instead. Jongin picks up on the third ring to say, “You have time to call?”

“They told me to take a long lunch.”

Taemin’s working on the long part. The lunch part, not so much. He can’t have SM telling him he’s too fat to come back, on top of all the other excuses they’ve already come up with.

“You should have gone out and had something good,” Jongin tells him. “You’re the only one of us who gets to keep them waiting.”

“I’m on a diet, remember.” The wind almost steals his words as it picks up, blowing his hair back and stinging his face. It almost hurts to smile, but Jongin will hear it in his voice if he doesn’t, and this needs to be a joke. “You’re doing me a favor ditching me, all I could think about was what I was gonna eat.”

That was dumb, though. Even on the other end of the phone, miles off, Jongin can still tell he’s faking it. “I get it if you’re mad. If you did this to me, I probably would be.”

Mad isn’t the right word. Taemin isn’t going to look for it too hard, though, because whatever it is, it’s worse. Sad? Lonely? Frustrated with his entire life? None of that is Jongin’s fault, though, especially the last one. Taemin is the one who picked a fight with SM, and he’s also the one who went and got old. He’ll probably be ancient by the time SM finds room in their budget for him to record an album, and then who knows if he’ll live long enough to see it released. The last time he came back, the process took two years and promotions lasted a week. This time…who knows. At least they haven’t asked him yet, _Isn’t it embarrassing for you to go on music shows? You have nothing left to prove, Taemin-ssi._ That’s when it’ll be really over. Kibum said that’s how they got Boa in the end.

Anyway. If Jongin is happier than Taemin, Taemin should be happy for him. He ignores the tightness in his chest and says, “Where are you two going?”

“Hokkaido.”

“To look at the snow?”

“Mm.” Jongin smiles in his ear, for real. “Sounds boring, huh.”

Sounds peaceful. It could even be fun. “There’ll probably be skiing and snowboarding. Snow crab should still be in season, too.”

Maybe Jongin hears the wistfulness in his voice. His is too gentle when he replies, “You can find that in Seoul, Taemin-ah. Eat some and think of me. Yena is allergic to shellfish.”

“It doesn’t taste the same here.”

It doesn’t sound as whiny in his head as it does out loud, hanging in the air, and the words leave this strange bitter taste in his mouth. But all Jongin has to say to that is, “If it’s too late to refund the tickets I’ll pay for them both,” and for one second Taemin hates him so much he can’t see straight. It passes in the next breath, though, leaving him with this strange aching feeling. It gets a little more painful every time this happens, but with every time he grows more used to it too. By the time Jongin is choosing his wife over him instead of his girlfriend, Taemin probably won’t even notice if it hurts anymore. Which, it shouldn’t even hurt at all. They’re 33 and Taemin is being so dumb.

“Just worry about your half,” he makes himself say. “I’ll have to cancel our reservations, too. I hope that’s easier than making them was.”

Jongin laughs at him like he was supposed to. “You didn’t have your manager do it?”

“Now that he’s married I feel bad asking him to do stuff like that. Besides, I’m not as cute anymore, I’m gonna have to learn to take care of myself.”

He should probably be looking for a way to hang up, but Jongin is the first person he’s talked to today who’s listened to what he’s said and replied. The people waiting for him downstairs just wait for him to finish and then move on.

“Yena says I got sexier after I turned 30,” Jongin says.

“How would she know?”

Taemin blurts it out before he can stop himself, but maybe that’s okay? It’s not like Jongin doesn’t know better than him that they’ve only been dating for a year.

He doesn’t mind, either. “My parents went through some old photos with her.”

Taemin’s stomach squeezes in on itself, almost like he’s been punched. “Oh.”

He probably met Yena for the first time years ago, on one of those rare times he and the Shinee hyungs went to visit the advertising division to greet staff or sing happy birthday, but Jongin introduced her to him again over dinner last year. And since then…nothing. Taemin gets Jongin on the nights she’s too busy or tired to sleep over, and Taemin gets silence for days and weeks in between, trying to figure out how to text Jongin without sounding like he’s lain awake staring at his phone for hours, and waiting for Jongin to remember how to text at all. Taemin still doesn’t know if he said or did something to make her dislike him, or if she just does. Or if this is all normal and Taemin needs to figure out how to be an adult.

He knows he does. But instead he “mm”’s until Jongin runs out of ways to apologize without just saying it, and then scrolls one number up in his contacts. The last message is from two weeks ago.

_if ur still alive answer._

Messages.

_if u dont im never talking to you again._

_dont tell me you lost your phone when you finally read this_

_i wont believe u_

Taemin didn’t lose it. He just tried to forget it existed the last time he not-texted Jongin, and then succeeded. Manager hyung has picked him up at the same time every morning since the meetings started in September, and now that it’s December, SM still hasn’t found any reasons to call him. They say everything they need to in the meetings, which is nothing.

 _im still alive,_ he taps out. _too bad right?_

There’s no point in saying sorry, is there? That’s too out of character. Taemin hesitates, even though he knows the whole while he’s going to let himself say it.

_im hungry hyung_

_buy me food_

After that he’ll give him all the time he needs to answer. Taemin hugs his knees to his chest and buries his face in his arms and waits. Whole seconds pass, then one whole minute. Two. Three? And then his phone buzzes and it’s like no time has passed at all.

_what do u want_

Taemin doesn’t even realize he’s smiling until he’s halfway through tapping out a reply.

_whatever goes with soju_

Which is barbecue in the end. Specifically gopchang. Taemin learned to eat intestines years and years ago already, on another night like this, but Jonghyun still orders Taemin enough hanwoo for four people to make up for it. He won’t let Taemin touch the grill, either, as though Taemin would burn the building down or something. Maybe Taemin should tell him he only gets takeout four nights a week these days, but Jonghyun would get the rest of the truth out of him right away. That he survives on his mom’s banchan the rest of the time.

Jonghyun is always the best at getting things out of him, probably because he’s always tried the hardest. He gives Taemin ten minutes to forget all about his diet and eat in peace, studying him through thin curls of smoke, and then says, “So what’s up?” He smiles at the look on Taemin’s face, even though he’s the one who put it there. “You never text me unless something’s wrong, Taeminnie. And then you never tell me what it is.”

Nothing. Everything.

“I text you,” is what comes out of Taemin’s mouth. Should that count as a lie?

Jonghyun smiles like he can’t help it, eyes crinkling up. “It’s okay if you don’t. You don’t text anyone else, either. The others are always asking me about you.”

Taemin hasn’t seen them in forever, except on TV. Minho’s drama wrapped up in August and Jinki’s will start in January, and the last time they talked, Kibum told Taemin, _It took twenty years, but hyung has taken the title of the New Heechul from you. Seriously, what planet are these people from that it’s unheard of for an idol to go into variety? I can think of like ten other examples off the top of my head, not counting myself._

The last time he saw Jonghyun was before that, even. Taemin ignores the twinge in his heart. “What do you tell them?”

“Things my mom hears from your mom.”

Taemin makes a face at him, even though he’s way too old for that to be cute anymore. “I don’t talk to mine about you.”

“Mine talks to me,” Jonghyun retorts, which, fair enough. But then Jonghyun sighs and half-smiles and busies himself with flipping the meat. “Now I guess she’ll call me. She’s moving in with my sister after all. Noona wants to go back to work, so she’s going to help with the kids.”

When Taemin tries to catch his eye, Jonghyun meets his gaze like nothing. Taemin wishes it were that easy for him to figure out how to say this. “What about you?”

Jonghyun can’t live alone. Back when they were rooming together in the dorm, Taemin never thought Jonghyun would miss him when he slept at home, but he made Jonghyun so lonely that he moved back in with his family. He’s stayed with them ever since, no matter how late he came back from work every night or how inconvenient it made hooking up, let alone dating. Taemin always thought that he wouldn’t move out until he had someone to move in with. His sister ended up going first, while Taemin was still in the military. Jonghyun came all the way to base to tell Taemin in person, then promised that he’d wait for Taemin to get out if he found someone too.

“What about me?” Jonghyun says evenly.

Is he really going to make Taemin ask? What is with everyone today? More like what is with today. It’s too bad Taemin can’t rewind to his alarm ringing and roll over and sleep through everything, but he’d probably have to go back years to fix his life right now anyway. He throws back a shot of soju instead and pours himself more, and then unsticks the words in his chest.

“How’s Bora-ssi?”

For one long moment Jonghyun just looks at him. “We broke up two weeks ago.”

“What, why?” It’s out of Taemin’s mouth before he can stop himself, and then hangs in the air horribly, this awful pulsating silence. While Taemin’s still working up to looking at what that did to Jonghyun’s face, Jonghyun leans across the table to lay slice after slice of beef on his plate. Taemin eats the first one, chewing and chewing and chewing until he can find his voice again. “Sorry, hyung, pretend I didn’t ask. I was just surprised.”

_Was that why you texted me? I’m sorry for that, too. Really, really._

“You didn’t see it coming?” There’s this weird half-smile playing about Jonghyun’s lips. “That’s what Kibummie told me. That he knew we wouldn’t last as soon as he saw us together. How come I never do? I don’t even know what number I’m on anymore.”

Taemin doesn’t, either. In all the time Taemin has known him, the longest Jonghyun’s ever gone without a girlfriend is a year, if that. Sometimes he broke their hearts, sometimes they broke his, but most of the time it was this job. It’s only now that their careers have slowed down and their fandom has grown older and Dispatch has moved on to fresher targets, that Jonghyun has finally been able to date for real. Movies, drives, walks along the river, nights at his girlfriend’s apartment instead of love hotels, whatever, all without worrying about how much he might cost the company. Bora was the first woman he took home to meet his mother.

“Hyung…”

Jonghyun’s smile twists ever so slightly. “What number are you on, do you know?”

“I’m not on one,” Taemin reminds him. “It’s been like a year.”

“Two, unless there’s someone you hid from me.” Which Taemin has never ever done, no matter how much he wanted to. Maybe he will next time, if Jonghyun is going to laugh at him like this. “I knew he wouldn’t last, either. That last guy you dated, the one Kibummie introduced you to. I should have told Kibummie that.”

Taemin has no idea why they’re even talking about him right now, but whatever. “You hated him.”

Jonghyun pauses in the middle of constructing the fattest lettuce wrap Taemin’s ever seen, eyeing him. “Is that what you thought?”

More like Taemin knew. Jonghyun made it impossible not to. When Taemin told him he was dating someone, Jonghyun said he’d buy them dinner before Taemin could find a way to tell him that Jungho was older than him, and it went downhill from there. “Don’t lie, hyung. It’s not like I care anymore.”

“I didn’t hate him, Taeminnie.” The words barely leave Jonghyun’s mouth before he wavers, amending, “I tried really hard to like him, since you did.”

That’s an even bigger lie, but Taemin lets him get away with it. “But he was too old for me~?”

Jonghyun leans across the table to feed Taemin the monster he’s created, so big Taemin’s lips stretch to take it in and he almost chokes on it, but then the beef explodes in his mouth and everything tastes like heaven. Jonghyun smiles indulgently, sitting back, watching his face as he chews and chews, correcting Taemin, “He wasn’t good enough for you. No one is, that’s the problem.”

“I guess I’m better off single, then~” Taemin says, half in hanwoo and half in Korean. He can’t even taste the bitterness of these next few words, not even when he fights to swallow and they’re all that’s left in his mouth. “He’s the one who dumped me, anyway.” Jonghyun opens his mouth as if to reply, but there’s nothing more to say about it. “Why are we even talking about me? If you don’t want to talk about yourself, that’s okay. Just…if you do, I’ll listen. I can shut up, too.”

For several long moments, Jonghyun tends the grill silently. Then, finally, “You hated her too, right?”

He sneaks a glance at Taemin. Does he think he’s dumb?

“I’m not answering that, or else you’ll hate me if you get back together.”

“That’s not going to happen. Neither of the things you said.” Jonghyun reaches for him yet again, this time to run his knuckle down Taemin’s nose, letting out this weird half-laugh, half-groan as he retreats back to his side of the table. “We were going to move in together. Mom still thinks we are, I haven’t even told her we broke up yet.”

Taemin ignores the twinge in his heart. He should probably ignore the first question that comes into his head, too, but it’s out there before he can stop himself: “Did you fall out of love?”

Jonghyun just shakes his head.

“More like we realized we were never in love? I never start out pretending, but that’s because the beginning is so easy. Once everything starts to slow down you have to go back to reality. Kibummie was right. I couldn’t see myself staying with her forever.”

“Living together isn’t the same thing as marrying, hyung.”

“It’s the first step, though.” Jonghyun’s eyes linger on Taemin’s face. “You don’t get it.”

“It’s not like it matters if I do or not.”

The second Taemin says it, he wishes he could take it back, especially when it has Jonghyun rushing to apologize. “I’m sorry, Taemin-ah, I wasn’t thinking.”

“What are you sorry for?” Taemin slides his hand across the table and touches Jonghyun’s wrist, cool metal of his watch pressing into his fingertips, but then maybe he has a harder time than Jonghyun, not looking away. “I’m the one who should be. Even if I could get married, I still probably wouldn’t. I used to think maybe when I hit 35, but I’m almost there, and nothing’s changed for me. It’d probably be more convenient for the company if it had.” Taemin cuts himself off there and gives Jonghyun a smile, as real of one as he can get after the day he’s had. “You’re different, though, hyung. They held you back for so long. You’ll find the right person. You have to.”

Jonghyun returns Taemin’s smile with one of his own, the one that means, _I don’t know how to tell you to stop being nice to me, but stop. Please._ When Taemin pours him a shot, he still accepts it, throwing it back and making a face as the soju burns down his throat. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep looking~.”

“If nothing works out in the end you’ll still have me,” Taemin tries again instead of shutting up like he said he would. “Sharing a house isn’t the same as sharing a room, it wouldn’t be that bad. Plus we’d be really old by then, I wouldn’t be able to find men to bring home, even.”

Not that he’s ever really done that. Jonghyun is the only one who ever fucked anyone in their dorm room. Taemin doesn’t know how drunk he must have been to take her there and not a hotel, and he probably wasn’t expecting Taemin to show up the next morning, either, looking for his 3DS. He found it while the girl was in the shower, underneath his bed along with her panties, and he was gone before she got out, but it took Jonghyun a week and a half to stop trying to annoy him into forgetting he was mad, and a string of twenty hour days in the middle of promoting “Everybody” for Taemin to stop pretending he wasn’t. He didn’t sleep there again until he began recording _Ace._

“You wouldn’t need to, you’d have me. Hyung is a man.” Jonghyun smiles, slow and secret, adding as it fades, “You have me already, Taeminnie. Always.” As he lays the first cut of gopchang on the grill it hisses and splatters, but Jonghyun doesn’t flinch, flipping the hanwoo and piling it high on Taemin’s plate again. “You still haven’t told me what’s wrong, either, by the way, which means it must be Jonginnie’s girlfriend again.”

Yes. No. The real problem is Taemin. He prods his glass forward with two fingers, shooting Jonghyun a look he gets right away. When Taemin throws back the first shot Jonghyun is there to fill his glass again. It’s going to take so much more to get drunk, give himself an excuse to say dumb things like, “What do you even do on overnight trips? Besides fuck, I mean.”

“Depends on where they’re going,” Jonghyun says, catching on right away. Taemin doesn’t even try to deny it.

“He and I were going to go to Jejudo this weekend. The tangerines are in season and everything, and we could’ve had abalone, and octopus,” and Taemin sounds so whiny, even to himself. “Then her schedule freed up and he ditched me.”

“You know how SM is. It’s a lot harder for the people with desk jobs to get time off.”

“Because it’s so easy for us?” Taemin’s voice comes out sharp enough to cut, but Jonghyun barely blinks. And it is easy, now. Way too easy. All Taemin would have to do is ask, and SM would be happy to let him sit out the rest of his contract, except to farm him for tour money. But this isn’t about them, and Taemin needs to stop making it about himself. “They’re going to Hokkaido.”

“Sounds romantic.” Jonghyun sounds wistful, meanwhile. Taemin looks up to find this weird smile playing about his lips. “Bora-ssi and I were going to go to Japan this weekend, too. Hot springs outside Tokyo. I still have everything booked, I don’t even know if the onsen ryokan would accept cancellations this late. I’ll probably just go by myself, it’s such a waste otherwise.”

_Hyung…_

Jonghyun won’t want to hear it, though. Taemin forces another smile and says, “I stayed with Jonginnie at an onsen ryokan once. I don’t remember where, but it was nice.”

 _Back when we still went places together._ He leaves that part unsaid, but Jonghyun probably reads it in his face. Taemin is over thirty and he’s about to get called a brat. He throws back the soju left in his glass and reaches for the bottle, but Jonghyun beats him to it, hand big and warm under Taemin’s.

“So come with me,” Jonghyun says out of nowhere.

“What?”

“Come to Japan with me this weekend,” Jonghyun repeats, smiling at Taemin’s surprise, like he’s not the one being weird and they’ve ever gone anywhere without the others. “You have no excuse, all your plans fell through.”

Taemin gives up on the soju, folding his hands in his lap and watching Jonghyun pour. “I thought maybe I would go into work. It’s not going well.”

“All the more reason to take your mind off~”

Is he playing with Taemin? It’s not funny.

“Take your mom, hyung,” he says. “She’s never been, right?”

“This was a trip I planned with my girlfriend and you want me to take my mother instead?” Jonghyun retorts, a little too fast. Which, what is Taemin to him besides a dongsaeng? Before Taemin can make himself say that, Jonghyun goes on, “That’s not the point. You are. You’re too hard on yourself, Taemin-ah. If you keep pushing yourself this hard, it makes me worry that you’ll break.”

Taemin’s face goes hot and his stomach curls up somehow, even when it’s this stuffed with the hanwoo Jonghyun has fed him. “I’ve been doing this since I was sixteen. Or is that what you meant?”

“Taemin-ah—”

“It’s okay, I deserve it,” Taemin says quickly. He should have just gone home and gone to bed, he sucks so much tonight. “I always made fun of you guys for getting old.”

“You’ll always be younger than me,” is Jonghyun’s only reply. All Taemin can think to say back is, _To everyone else I’m old. I’m not even an oppa anymore, I’m an ahjussi. No one looks at me like you do._ You and the other hyungs, more like. Taemin’s face burns some more, but if his ears are betraying him and turning red, Jonghyun doesn’t say anything. Just, “Think about it, Taeminnie.”

Is he really serious?

Really…?

“I will,” Taemin promises. He’s not even lying. Intestines take so much longer to cook than beef, but they should be done by now, right? When Taemin goes in to check, Jonghyun clicks his tongue, fending his chopsticks off. He can’t stop Taemin from taking hanwoo off his own plate and putting it on his, though. “Eat more. Otherwise I won’t help you with the gopchang, either.”

Jonghyun eats.

“The flight leaves at eight on Friday night,” he says with his mouth full.

That only gives Taemin until the day after tomorrow to decide. When he sneaks a glance at Jonghyun, Jonghyun catches him in half a second. “You won’t be lonely if you go on your own?”

“I will be.”

“Hyung~”

Jonghyun smiles around his chopsticks, unrepentant. “I’m helping you think.”

“Of you?”

Like Taemin needs any help with that. Jonghyun’s smile widens and he nods all the same.

“It’s only fair. If you don’t make it, I’ll be thinking of you.”

They part ways in the parking lot. Taemin isn’t even drunk, not even slightly, but Jonghyun’s eyes started losing focus around their third bottle, so he calls him a taxi just to be safe. Jonghyun only puts up a fight until Taemin promises to wait with him, and then he admits he knew better than to take his car here anyway, and that’s the last thing either of them says about it. For eons it’s just Taemin and Jonghyun and the moon, peering down at them through the clouds, but it’s like no time at all has passed when the taxi pulls up and Jonghyun gathers him up into his arms clumsily, squeezing him too tight. He noses into Taemin’s hair and murmurs in his ear, “Good night, Taeminnie,” so warm and solid the night feels colder than cold when Taemin has to let him go. He has the whole drive home to wish he’d given Jonghyun a ride himself, and then the whole next morning to regret that he didn’t stay out longer, drink more, get everything trapped inside his chest out.

He still gets up when his alarm tells him to and ignores his stomach when it tells him it’s empty. Skipping dinner would be better than skipping breakfast, but he always has so many feelings to eat by the end of the day, and nothing but this gnawing, buzzing one going in. Even the gym can’t get rid of it, and it only grows worse as he sits through his morning meetings. When the A&R team finally lets him into the vaults, at least there’ll be more music and less talking, but they haven’t moved beyond discussing concepts. They always used to break their promise that Taemin and the others would finally come back as men rather than boys, and he always joked that he’d rather that than come back as an ahjussi. The joke’s on him now, even if they never use that word. Just millions and millions of others that mean the same thing. Mature. Tasteful. Elegant. “Why change the formula when it’s proven to work for you? You’ve spent your career building your brand, now is the time to capitalize on it.”

 _The only people interested in your music now are people who were already a fan five, ten years ago,_ in other words. _Don’t you think it’s time you stop thinking in terms of growth? Abandon the mentality that art has to mean experimentation. You’ve already done everything you’ll ever do as an idol, now you can just do it over and over and over again, anytime you need money. You already have enough to live on for the rest of your life, what more do you want from us?_

And on and on and on, until Taemin could scream. Instead he sits through it, then sits through lunch too. There’s no way he didn’t gain weight last night, and it’s not like his food would taste like anything anyway, so he picks the healthiest looking salad he can find and takes it to the furthest corner of the SM cafeteria. The words in his book mean even less than the company’s, drowned out by the chatter of hoobaes all around him. It’s so rare to run into anyone now who’s not scared to death to even look him in the eye, even rarer to see someone he knows. Even the ones who have re-signed are still too busy with their lives, now that they actually have them.

Jongin, too. He texts Taemin during his afternoon meeting, and then Taemin has the rest of it to wish he hadn’t seen it.

_snowed so much the streets are like tunnels. pretty, right?_

Much prettier than fluorescent lights and tiled floors and the clock ticking silently. The walls are whiter than the snow in Jongin’s picture and there are no windows. It’s so ugly outside, too, slushy and dark and grey, but at least Taemin can breathe again. Or not.

_yena knows a good place for snow crab in itaewon. her family swears by it. go see if theyre right~. there must be other things on the menu she likes, maybe i can have it again_

Manager hyung drops Taemin off outside his building as always, since the parking garage is too much hassle. If he’s as tired of sitting around SM as Taemin is, he doesn’t show it, just smiles and waves and says, "See you tomorrow, Taemin-ah." He’s the only person to call Taemin that all day. When he was younger, Taemin wanted to be hyung or sunbaenim so desperately, anything but Taeminnie, and he fought so hard to get the staff to call him Taemin-ssi, but now all he wants to do is go back. He’s not going anywhere, though. His book is even more boring now that the words are actually going in, whatever Jinki said when he recommended it, there’s nothing on TV, and he fucks up every song he tries on the piano, stopping as soon as he starts. When he gives up and goes to bed, his stomach eats itself, as hollow and empty now as it was stuffed to bursting last night, and his suitcase stares at him from the corner. He already packed everything up days ago, including his favorite dildo, but if it feels like too much work just to open it back up and dig for it, then it’d take more than he has right now to make himself come.

He checks his phone one last time before laying it down on his bedside table and flicking it out of reach. Two more texts from Jongin. None from Jonghyun. Figures.

…That’s not fair. If Jonghyun had texted him, he’d be the one lying here, waiting for a response that would probably never come. He’s already waiting as it is to see what Taemin decides.

_Were you serious, hyung? Can I really just go with you? Can I really do that?_

It probably isn’t snowy in Tokyo, but it shouldn’t be as cold as here, either, and the last time Taemin bathed in the hot springs was the warmest he’d ever been, melting the stress off, healing aches and pains he didn’t even know he had. The people who ran the one he visited with Jongin claimed it could cure every illness but lovesickness. Maybe it’s good for aging, too. One weekend isn’t enough to make a difference, though, and a million years could pass and it wouldn’t do anything for his heart. Nothing ever has.

_You’ll be thinking about Bora-ssi the whole time you’re with me, hyung. Now you’re saying you never loved her, but you’re the one who dated her for two years. You’ll think about what she would have said, if she would have laughed at this or that, which panties she would’ve brought, how she would have looked in the bath. I know you don’t want to be alone, I don’t want you to be either, but why do I have to be there for that?_

It’s always Taemin, until one day it won’t be anymore. Unless Jonghyun gets divorced, then it will be again. In the meantime, Taemin will be lying here alone, so tired he can’t sleep.

Except he does, because that’s his alarm screaming at him to wake up. Manager hyung picks him up in the dark and the sky is just barely tinged with pink when Taemin emerges from the gym. On the way to SM, he watches through the windshield as Friday dawns even uglier than Thursday. The meeting room never changes, though. Same four walls, same bullshit.

“To continue where we left off last time, we were thinking that it might be good to revisit your earlier work,” the assistant director tells him today. “Obviously I don’t mean a one-to-one thing where we set out to replicate a previous era, but aesthetic callbacks.”

Do the mean album art and outfits and hairstyles, easter eggs in song titles and lyrics, or do they mean ‘let’s remake one of your old hits?’ Back when Taemin was on the right side of thirty, it always meant the former, but now…

“I’m not opposed to that, as long as it’s not the centerpiece,” he begins warily.

“You don’t think your fans would be interested in revisiting parts of your career?” another staffer jumps in. The maknae. When Taemin turns to her she clears her throat and sits up straighter, like Taemin can’t see her spinning her pen nervously in her hands. “Not literally, obviously, but. Memories have a certain pull, and they started liking you for a reason. It can’t hurt to remind them.”

The last few meetings, she barely spoke up. If she’s taking the same line as them now, it’s not because she thought of it herself. They probably met without him beforehand, and they might as well have had this meeting without him now. Except he can’t think like that, he can’t just give up and go home, not when it took him twenty years to get here. What would Jonghyun say?

Taemin turns back to the assistant director.

“You keep saying that we should stick with what sells, but who would want to listen to another version of the same song? The company never even tried that with ‘Gee,’ and if you want to look at it in terms of sales, follow up hits usually have diminishing returns.”

The maknae clears her throat again, but someone else saves her and speaks up. “It’s not a follow up hit if it’s years later, though?”

Taemin shouldn’t have tried to sound smart, he always ends up fucking up. The point was, “My whole discography is available to stream, the fans can revisit it themselves whenever they like. They don’t need me for that.”

“Again, we’re not saying there won’t be anything new, that goes against the entire creative ethos of this company,” the assistant director cuts in. He pauses, then goes on, “If what you want is a change, then maybe we should look into doing a ballad album. Shinee did that before with 1 and 1, right?” He smiles, tipping his head towards Taemin. “I haven’t been around as long as you, but I’m all caught up on company history.”

The staff dissolves into titters around Taemin. He forces himself to smile back, hoping it doesn’t look half as awful as it feels. He withdraws his hands from the tabletop and folds them in his lap, squeezing down on his own fingers until it starts to hurt. All he can do is try again.

“It’s not about change, it’s more like…I don’t want to repeat myself? I’ve always looked at each comeback as doing the next thing. We should be figuring out what that is.”

Their laughter dies, leaving a silence even heavier than before in its wake. The assistant director is the one to clear his throat this time, but he holds Taemin’s eyes. “It’d be difficult for you to set trends at this point, and following them is a bit…”

Taemin barely needs to think to fill in the blank.

“Embarrassing?” He forces that fucking smile back on his face while his insides twist themselves into knots. He’s the one who said it, but that doesn’t make it any easier to live with. “I guess it’s my turn to start hearing that word after all~”

No one laughs at that. Maybe because it’s not funny, maybe because it’s true, maybe because it’s not their fault he was born in 1993.

“I feel like we’re talking past each other, Taemin-ssi,” the assistant director says, almost apologetically.

“I can agree with that.” Taemin has to push himself to say that much. “Maybe it’d be better to start going through the vaults? That way we’d have something concrete to talk about.”

The assistant director shakes his head again. No. Of course he doesn’t just say that word. The longer Taemin has been here, the less he’s heard it, but there are times when he would kill to hear it, instead of bullshit like, “Once we establish our general direction first, we can curate songs based on your sound, and you won’t have as much to go through personally.”

“I don’t mind—”

“We don’t either, Taemin-ssi,” another staffer says quickly. He smiles at Taemin, too. “That’s what we’re here for.”

_You’re here to keep me in line. Just say that._

Taemin’s out of options. “Does Director-nim have any opinions?”

“Not yet? When we get somewhere she’ll take a more active role. She’s busy with the NBG’s debut. Which means we can just focus on what the artist wants for now~”

Taemin wants out.

He feels for his phone in his pocket while the assistant director circles back around. We dug up some material from your Move and Want eras. Here’s a copy for you to look at…

_hyung_

His fingers tap that word out on instinct, but Taemin has to look for the rest of it, ducking his head and ignoring the sheath of papers in front of him to peer into his lap.

_can u go back to my place and get my suitcase_

_and drive me to the airport after this_

_if its too far its ok i can get a taxi_

If Manager hyung isn’t asleep on the couch out there, he’ll be playing that game on his phone. If he ignores Taemin…

He doesn’t.

_where is it?_

_not the airport ur suitcase_

Taemin’s not if he should take that to mean Manager hyung thinks Taemin thinks he’s dumb, or if he thinks Taemin is the dumb one. Taemin doesn’t think that, he knows. If he were smart, this meeting would already be over. He wouldn’t be typing out the passcode to his apartment and telling Manager hyung where he left it, and his heart wouldn’t be racing ahead of him like this. He’s not even sure he’ll be able to make it in time, and Jonghyun might be too mad at him for not deciding any sooner to smile that one smile.

“Taemin-ssi?” the assistant director says.

In a few hours, all of Seoul will be a speck in Taemin’s window, and that includes him. Taemin just has to hold out until then. He doesn’t even realize he’s smiling himself until it fades from his face. For the first time in two days, it was for real.

Taemin texts Manager hyung again five minutes before the meeting is scheduled to end, and by the time Taemin sprints all the way down to the parking garage he’s already started the car. He gets his breath back and then some, sitting in traffic, crawling forward while the clock flies ahead, and then he has to run again when they reach the airport. He would have forgotten his suitcase in the trunk if it weren’t for Manager hyung calling after him, and he forgets he even needs a boarding pass until he hits the doors. Is he too late? There’s no way Jonghyun hasn’t already gone through security by now, and Taemin doesn’t even have the confirmation number, and. And he has his phone. Why is he being so dumb, why is he wasting so much time? His fingers are almost too clumsy to type.

_hyung need to print my ticket_

_also which gate_

Seconds pass. Maybe Jonghyun turned his phone off already? Maybe he gave up on Taemin and it’s still in Bora’s name. People push past Taemin, dragging suitcases up to the counter, milling around the giant arrival and departure boards, lining up at the ID checkpoint. Some of them give him weird looks, but they don’t know how fast his heart is pounding right now, how tight his chest is, as he stares so hard at the screen that his vision blurs. Until—

“Taemin-ah.”

_Hyung._

All Taemin has to do is turn around and Jonghyun is there. It’s only been two days since they last saw each other. Just one second ago it felt like lifetimes, but now it feels like no time at all, especially when Jonghyun lets go of his suitcase to pinch Taemin’s cheek, hard. He’s smiling at him even harder, eyes crinkling up. “You’re not the one who should look so surprised to see me. Aigoooo.”

“Sorry, hyung,” Taemin says stupidly.

“I waited for you for two days, until the very last minute, and now you text me? I was about to give up and go in when I saw you,” Jonghyun admonishes him, pressing his hand between Taemin’s shoulder blades and steering him towards security. “Try saying ‘thank you, hyung’ instead. Hyung already wasted paper on your ticket, come on.”

Taemin follows him towards the gates, heart picking up with every step.

Their plane lands in Japan at ten thirty, which is when Taemin learns that by “outside Tokyo,” Jonghyun meant the onsen ryokan was in Hakone, another two and a half hour long train ride away. He buys Taemin bottled water and the prettiest, freshest bento he’s ever seen at a kiosk on the platform, and then gets another one for himself after Taemin refuses to share. They eat on the train, Taemin snatching glances out the window to watch the countryside whir by, dark and silent, Jonghyun snatching glances at Taemin’s face to check if the food has worked on him yet. Taemin isn’t even that mad, and it’s not like he’s scary when he actually is anyway. If he waited for Jonghyun to break the silence between them, it probably wouldn’t be that long, and maybe asking him why the fuck he would ever pick a night flight isn’t the nicest way to do it himself. Jonghyun doesn’t even blink before he’s telling Taemin, “It was the earliest Bora-ssi could get out, they have her working overtime on Itzy’s comeback.” He presses his shoulder into Taemin’s. “Honestly, it probably would have stressed her out more to go with me. You too, huh.”

Bora probably had the same meeting Taemin had today, except on the other side of the table. If someone had told Taemin ten years ago that Jonghyun would date the creative director at JYP, he would have laughed, and not just because it was a man back then. As soon as he saw Bora, though, he got it. She was Jonghyun’s type exactly: smart, confident, sexy, older, blah blah blah. Everything Taemin’s not. But Taemin is the one with Jonghyun now, hundreds of miles away from their lives.

Taemin lets himself lean against Jonghyun’s side instead of the window. “I’m just tired, hyung.”

He doesn’t even realize how much until hours and hours later, after the taxi drops them off at the onsen ryokan and the grandmother at the front desk shows them to their rooms, drags their futons out and leaves them to change into their yukata, and finally his body hits the mattress. Then he’s pretty sure he’s never getting up again. The last thing he remembers is Jonghyun’s feet whispering across the floor and the bathroom light clicking on as he goes to brush his teeth, the water running, then his hands drawing the blanket over Taemin, his voice murmuring, “Are you sleeping, Taeminnie?”

Yes.

For a long, long time. And then for a long time after that, Taemin drifts in and out. In between the shower turning on and off, he can hear Jonghyun’s voice faintly, singing a song Taemin can’t…quite…recognize…and then the next thing is Jonghyun hissing a curse from the other side of the room. Probably stubbed his toe on his way out to the little courtyard where the bath is. Taemin doesn’t hear his yukata whispering over his skin or the water murmuring or Jonghyun’s groan as he settles in, but he’s probably bathing now. As for Taemin…silence, somehow louder than anything Jonghyun could have done to break it, deep and heavy, pressing Taemin into his mattress. Sunlight slowly creeps into the room. Jonghyun just walks back in, door sliding open and then shut, bare feet thudding across the tatami-mat floor.

“Taemin-ah.” Taemin turns his face into his pillow, but that doesn’t stop Jonghyun from dropping down next to him with a thwump, or closing his hand over Taemin’s shoulder, big and warm, too gentle to shake him awake. He smells like spring. “Don’t go back to sleep on me. Taemin-ah~”

“Just a little longer.”

He should’ve known that would just make Jonghyun lay down and snuggle closer until they’re pressed together from shoulder to toes with only the blanket separating them, looping his arm around Taemin’s waist.

“Go out with me,” Jonghyun says.

Taemin isn’t trapped, he can just roll onto his stomach or crawl out of bed or anything besides whine, “We just got here.”

“Last night. It’s morning. I have to go shopping, I promised Kibummie I would get him something, which means Minho and Jinki hyung will get mad if I forget them.” At Jonghyun, not Taemin. Before Taemin can point that out, Jonghyun changes tack, coaxing him, “Our flight home isn’t until tomorrow afternoon, so you’ll still have a whole day to bathe.”

Taemin is going to have to get up sometime, but right now? Jonghyun should make it easier, not harder, nosing into Taemin’s hair, hand sneaking under the blanket to pinch or tickle him. When Taemin traps it in his own, Jonghyun just lets him win, idly playing with his fingers.

“I don’t even know where they put my shoes,” is all Taemin has left.

It’s useless. The blanket rustles behind Taemin as Jonghyun props himself up on his elbow, peering down into Taemin’s face. All Taemin has to do is turn onto his back and open his eyes, and Jonghyun is the first thing he sees. Hair damp, blacker than black, tiniest smile on his lips. He’s been up for how long and somehow he still has sleep in his eyes. He lets Taemin get it for him, closing one eye, then the other.

“We can just borrow geta and wear these,” Jonghyun says, reaching up to adjust the collar of his yukata. The moment he lets go it goes back to gaping open, warm smooth skin everywhere. Anyway. “Don’t be embarrassed, you look really pretty. Traditional wear suits you.”

Jonghyun has been telling him things like that since he was thirteen years old, and he’s meant them all. Taemin’s heart should be used to it by now. “Isn’t it too cold? It’s winter, hyung.”

“It’s almost fifty out. Besides, they should have jackets, too,” Jonghyun counters immediately. He brushes Taemin’s hair back from his face, watching his expression for the minutest tell. “It’s not far and it won’t take long, either, I looked it all up online, I know where to go. There should be street food everywhere. Okonomiyaki, yakitori…croquettes…They’re famous for mochi here, too. Hyung will buy you whatever you want. Please, Taeminnie.” If Taemin stayed here they’d probably feed him a nine course meal for breakfast, that’s what they did at the place Jongin and Taemin stayed, but then Jonghyun has to say it. “Go on a date with me.”

Taemin pushes himself up, snatching at his collar when his yukata slips down over one shoulder, rubbing his hands over his face while he waits for his cheeks to cool, for his face to feel like his again, for his body to remember all the years it’s been. He doesn’t know if it’s seconds or an eternity before he can trust his voice again.

“Whatever I want.”

Jonghyun beams.

He waits while Taemin stumbles over to the bathroom and washes up, but if Taemin keeps combing his fingers through his hair and biting his lips and trying to smush his cheeks with his palms until he likes what he sees in the mirror, Jonghyun will be an old man by the time he gets out. Taemin should have brought makeup. Forget Jonghyun, what if someone recognizes him? Whatever. It’s already his vacation from SM, it can be his vacation from caring about his visuals too.

It was Jonghyun’s idea and he’s spent half his life dancing in platform shoes and in-soles, but he clings to Taemin’s shoulder while he toes into his geta in the main entryway of the inn, fingers digging into Taemin’s flesh, and he makes it maybe ten steps down the sunlit street before he wobbles. Taemin’s hand shoots out to grab his wrist before he can even think, righting Jonghyun’s balance. Jonghyun’s only thanks is to smile this little smile, before he turns in Taemin’s grip, threading their fingers together.

“Since it’s a date,” he says.

He returns Taemin’s look with one of his own, squeezing his hand and tugging him along. Taemin doesn’t even know where they’re going, but he’s spent so much of his life following Jonghyun that he barely questions it, drinking in the sights the darkness had swallowed last night. There are no leaves on the trees and the few people they pass on the sidewalk are bundled up in scarves and hats, heads bowed against the wind, but that just means they’re not looking at Taemin and Jonghyun, and Jonghyun’s hand is so warm in his he can barely feel the chill. Just the sun on his face, fresh air opening up his chest, neon signs and bicycle racks and cats peering out from alleys, snatches of conversations he’d have to turn his brain on to understand, their shadows stretching out in front of them. As they draw closer to the market, the smell of grease and salt torments Taemin and the crowd starts to thicken, little by little, until they’re surrounded on all sides, and Taemin’s insides squeeze in on themselves, small enough to disappear. He only realizes he’s holding on too tight when Jonghyun adjusts his grip, drawing him in closer instead of letting go and flapping his hand until feeling returns to it, flashing Taemin a wounded look, teasing him, _how are you so much stronger than you look,_ any of the things the other hyungs would try.

As long as they’re speaking Korean, it should be fine if Taemin doesn’t lower his voice to say, “You really don’t get scared people will recognize you anymore?”

It’s been three years since the last time Shinee released anything in Japan.

“It still hurts my pride when they don’t, sometimes.” Jonghyun squeezes his hand again and shoots him a smile. “Not right now, though.”

“It’s only because I’m not wearing makeup.”

Jonghyun shakes his head at him, pulling him towards the nearest souvenir shop. “If you’re embarrassed by your bare face, what about the rest of us?”

“I miss seeing the other hyungs in makeup, but you don’t need it as much,” Taemin replies, just so that Jonghyun will laugh like that. Taemin is useless at everything else. Jonghyun rejects every troll gift Taemin finds and he knows better than to ask Taemin’s advice for sincere ones, leaving Taemin to hang onto him while he peers into shop windows and ducks in to peruse the shelves. Maybe he should be letting go? Or go off to eat and pay for his own food. He’d be feeling pretty forgotten after five minutes of this if Jonghyun didn’t keep shooting him little glances every five seconds.

“You don’t miss anything about me from back then?” Jonghyun asks him finally as they step back out into the street again, laden down with two bags of possibilities for Kibum to judge for himself. Minho and Jinki can wait until after Taemin’s eaten something. Specifically…takoyaki. As Taemin pulls him towards the food cart, Jonghyun gives him yet another look, even more obvious. “Then again, I guess I’ve aged better than them~”

Is that what he wanted to hear? He doesn’t need Taemin to tell him how well his 30s suit him like Yena told Jongin, and it’d be no fun if he did, anyway. “More like you’ve changed less than they have?”

“I’m just the same old Jonghyunnie hyung?”

Jonghyun doesn’t sound particularly happy about that, but he should.

“I met you when I was thirteen, hyung. There’s nothing you could do that could surprise me anymore,” Taemin tries, but that’s not good enough either. What else is there? “Whatever you think is different now, a lot of it is probably just stuff I don’t notice. You still dress the same, you don’t get big tattoos…you used to bleach your hair so much that it took me forever to get used to you with it black again, but it’s been forever since then.”

“I still dye it,” Jonghyun admits as they watch the woman behind the counter pile takoyaki into a paper cup and squiggle mayonnaise and then sauce over them, black and white crisscrosses. “I’m seriously going grey.”

“At least you’re not going bald like Minho hyung.”

Jonghyun half-laughs, half-groans. “Taemin-ah~”

He only lets Taemin go finally to dig his wallet out of his pocket and pay. Taemin feels the loss until the lady passes him the cup and he takes that first bite, crisp and chewy, tangy and salty, so soft it almost melts in his mouth, so hot it’s going to burn his tongue if he doesn’t breathe out, but who cares, when it’s like nothing he’s tasted in forever. Except the hanwoo Jonghyun fed him like three days ago.

“I’m probably going to be the one who gets fat,” Taemin says as they continue down the street. And it’s going to be all Jonghyun’s fault. “I already had a lot of secret fat, but it’s not secret now, I’m starting to look like I weigh as much as I do. I can’t eat like this anymore, but there’ll be nothing to stop me when my career is over.”

“How can someone so skinny talk like that?” Jonghyun sneaks his hand up Taemin’s side, pinching his soft stomach before Taemin can squirm away. “I don’t feel any difference. I’ll have to check later.”

In the bath, he means. When they’re both naked. Like they’ve been in front of each other ten million times in the past, but Taemin’s face flames all the same, and he has to stuff takoyaki into Jonghyun’s smirk just to get it off his face. Jonghyun’s lips close around his finger along with the toothpick, hot and wet and Taemin is way, way too old for words like that to bloom under his skin. It’s just, it’s been years.

“Are you trying to save money?” Taemin wipes sauce from the corner of Jonghyun’s mouth and turns away to stuff himself with takoyaki, too, mouth so full his voice will come out weird no matter what. “Don’t be cheap, you said it’s a date. I’m just going to forget my diet today~”

Along with everything else in his life that’s not Jonghyun, probably.

When they get back finally it’s almost four and Taemin is so full he half wants to roll himself back up in his futon and sleep some more. The bath is barely any further away, though, even if Jonghyun catches Taemin on his way out and reminds him he has to shower first. There’s no point in rushing after that, since Jonghyun will beat him out no matter what, so Taemin takes his time instead, shampooing his hair and scrubbing his skin, then lingering under the water, waiting for it to stop burning, for the fluttering in his stomach to stop, for his embarrassment to just wash away. It’s such a short walk from the bathroom to the courtyard, but he wraps himself back up in his yukata all the same, fumbling with the tie as he crosses the room, heart pounding louder than his footsteps, before giving up and holding it closed while he steps outside and slides the door shut behind him. The air feels crisper out here in the shade of the wooden pavilion than it did in town, even with the steam rising from the bath and the fence hiding them from the wind. Taemin’s bare feet slap across the cold stone walkway, carrying him towards the edge of the bath. It’s so much smaller than he remembers the onsen he and Jongin visited being, somehow. Just big enough for two people stretched out. Jonghyun smiles up at him wordlessly, leaning back against the rocky rim, towel draped over his head and water lapping at his chest. It would be impossible for Jonghyun to fill out his clothes, with how big he buys them, and Taemin can’t remember the last time the coordis dressed him, and it’s been a long time since Taemin knew whether Jonghyun’s daily routine included working out. Which is all a really long train of thought leading towards one thing: abs. That and some new tattoos, inked over Jonghyun's chest and arms, jet black against his skin. But mostly abs.

Taemin has none himself. His comeback is so far off yet that he’s only going to the gym to burn fat and hopefully stress too, and he ate a week’s worth of calories this morning on top of that. He turns away to slip his yukata off, ears tingling, open air caressing his naked body. He can feel Jonghyun’s eyes burning into his skin, even after he’s finished pouring spring water over himself and slid down into the heat of the bath opposite Jonghyun, and Jonghyun drags them back up to Taemin’s face. Their legs brush under the water as Taemin stretches out, and he almost pushes his foot into Jonghyun’s lap before Jonghyun catches it in his hand. Then he kind of forgets to let go, looping his fingers around Taemin’s ankle. Taemin doesn’t forget to pull away, he just doesn’t do it. Jonghyun’s hand is the only thing keeping him from drifting away as he sinks deeper into the water, tipping his head back, closing his eyes. Time floats away from them. Taemin doesn’t know if it’s been ten minutes or ten million years when Jonghyun says, “There are a lot of things you didn’t say last time, right?”

Taemin cracks his eyes open to find Jonghyun staring into his face intently, probably trying to read it. “You want to talk about SM now?”

“It doesn’t have to be your career, it can be anything.” Jonghyun hesitates, rubbing his thumb up and down the bump in Taemin’s ankle. Narrowing his eyes at Taemin. “You said you weren’t dating anyone, but that doesn’t mean anything. Is there a guy you like?”

“Let’s talk about SM.”

Jonghyun just looks at him some more. That’s better than him faking a laugh, let alone him pushing it, except now Taemin is left dredging his week back up. Not even that. It goes back further, before he even enlisted maybe. From the beginning, his solos were always rushed or delayed, but as years passed, the delays got longer and longer. He could finish recording something, only for SM to sit on the masters while other groups came back and the company counted their money, and the longer they sat on it, the louder his own imperfections grew in Taemin’s ears, vocals, arrangement, mixing, song choice, everything, until he ran out of excuses to let himself release it as is. He still doesn’t know if going back in and changing things has ever set him back, or if SM would have found excuses to fight with him over promotions instead.

“I never realized me and the company were such a bad match,” Taemin says. “I always thought I was the perfect SM idol. It was a point of pride for me.”

Jonghyun is the one who’s always fought with them, to submit his lyrics for Shinee songs, to write his own music and release albums he believed in, to get tattoos and speak his mind and be himself, but he’s also the one who’s pushed back his own solo comeback for four years now to focus on producing, and he’s not going to say any of these things to Taemin now. He’s only ever here to listen to Taemin’s problems, not talk about his own, even when here is naked in a bath with sunlight glistening in his hair and dancing on his smooth skin and. His eyes are up there.

For once it’s safe for the flush to creep into Taemin’s face, so he can just ignore it and go on, “Now it’s like I’m…untouchable? That’s not the right word.”

Jonghyun goes with it anyway. “You’re supposed to be seen but not touched. You’re surrounded by hoobaes who revere you, and the staff can’t say no to you, so they keep finding new excuses to delay everything instead.”

“It’s not the staff’s fault, it’s the people above them.” But Jonghyun already knows that better than anyone. “I don’t even get to start fights with them anymore. If I pushed as hard as I used to I’d still get nowhere, and they’d just get in trouble. Or maybe I would finally.”

Jonghyun nudges his foot against Taemin’s hip, leg sliding against Taemin’s under the water, hair rasping against Taemin’s skin. “What about your producer, what’s he been doing?”

“I don’t have one. They keep changing them on me, I’m in between number three and four right now. Every time it gets pushed back they get shuffled to another project. Director-nim hasn’t attended any of the meetings, either. The staff said she’s busy with the new boy group.”

“Taeminnie…”

“I’m just an image to the company now. I can still make them look good, but I’m a bad investment, I don’t make them enough money.” But he’s already made enough himself for his family to live out their days, and Taemin should be saying something to get that look off Jonghyun’s face, not whining more and making it worse. It’s less painful than he’d thought to make himself smile. “I should have learned to write and produce like you, then I could do everything myself.”

Instead of smiling back, Jonghyun tells him, “If you don’t re-sign I won’t either, Taeminnie. The others feel the same.”

Taemin shakes his head. “You guys are all doing so much better than me. I’m the one who needs to change. They always said when we got older we could have our own lives. It’s my own fault I don’t have one.”

“I don’t either.” Jonghyun half-smiles, faint, ironic, trailing his finger across the surface of the water, sending tiny ripples lapping over Taemin’s skin. “Is that really how it looks to you, that hyung has everything figured out?”

Compared to eight years ago, yes. Jonghyun eats and sleeps like normal again. He quit smoking after getting out of the army. When he has time off he doesn’t spend it lying in the dark and torturing himself, and he’s stopped working himself to the bone. He had a girlfriend he was thinking about marrying.

Taemin ignores the tightness in his chest, forcing the words out. “You must be hurting a lot, right? More than normal, even.”

“I’m not talking about Bora-ssi, Taeminnie.” Jonghyun holds Taemin’s eyes. Shouldn’t it be harder for him than Taemin, not looking away? But somehow it isn’t. “And there’s no such thing as normal when it comes to breakups. It doesn’t matter how many women I’ve dated, they were all different.”

Does he think Taemin doesn’t know that? He’s been here for them all. The ones that had Jonghyun bursting into tears over the randomest things, the ones that made him rage and sulk for days, the ones where they agreed to be friends and the ones where Jonghyun hid behind Minho at awards shows to avoid them, the ones that hit him so hard Taemin worried he’d never get up again. This time, somehow, it only took two weeks for Bora to become Bora-ssi.

“It’s okay if you’re not okay, is all I meant. It sounds like things got really complicated at the end, but you just have to look at it simply,” Taemin says out loud. “‘It didn’t work out this time. Next time it will.’”

Jonghyun snorts. “Is that what you tell yourself?”

If he doesn’t want Taemin’s help, he’s going to have to say that. “Why do we always end up talking about me? I want to talk about you for once.”

If it’s not about Bora, though, then it’s about work for him too. Taemin falters, but Jonghyun reads his mind anyway. “What is there to talk about? I’m not working on anything, either.”

“You told me you were taking time off for yourself, that’s different,” Taemin reminds him, as gently as he can.

“Is it?” Jonghyun half-smiles again, breaking eye contact to stare down into the water. It takes everything Taemin has not to close his legs and hunch his shoulders, try to hide somehow when it’s not like Jonghyun would even look. He has way more important things to talk about, and Taemin is supposed to be listening, and. “It’s funny. Back when we were rookies, I would have given anything to have just one day off, and then I probably would have spent it just sleeping anyway. I resented having no time for anything else, I had a million things I wanted to do. But now…now that I have all the time in the world, nothing I do ever seems to fill it.”

Taemin gets that, so much it hurts. “You’ll never love anything like you love music.”

Jonghyun shakes his head at him, though. “I don’t even know if it’s that. I think I just miss working like a crazy person.”

Taemin gets that, too, or else he wouldn’t be dragging himself in to those stupid meetings every morning. When Jonghyun asked him earlier what he missed, he should have said Shinee’s Jonghyun. Or just Shinee. Promoting as a group. Seeing Jonghyun and the other hyungs every day. With everyone so busy, their comeback is years away. One of the members will probably get married first at this point.

This is about Jonghyun, though. Taemin thought he’d spent the last four years trying to figure out how to say this, but maybe he spent them just not saying it.

“Then come back.” The words come out in a painful rush, but that’s as far as he gets before the look on Jonghyun’s face hits him, and he has to fall back on, “To produce. You won’t have the same problems as me, hyung. They won’t even make you stay in-house, that’s how you met—“ _Bora-ssi._ It barely registers on Jonghyun’s face, so Taemin fumbles on, “There has to be someone you want to work with.”

“I still get offers, Taemin-ah. I look at them all before I turn them down.” Jonghyun smiles faintly at the look in Taemin’s face, and that’s all the warning he gets before Jonghyun leans in to pinch his cheek. “You think I’m too picky, right? If their demos don’t speak to me, then they don’t want me working on their album. It’d just be hell for both of us.”

_Come back for real, hyung. It’s been so long. You don’t have to promote. There’s no way they’d make you, I could barely get a week out of them last time and I wanted to do it._

But again, Taemin falters. “What about songwriting? That’s halfway.”

“I’d have to write something first.”

Taemin should never have started this conversation, but now it’s up to him to find the right thing to say. He’s the only one Jonghyun has right now. “You’re still blocked?”

Something in Jonghyun’s expression cracks, just a little.

“I thought it was because I was happy. Now I think it was because I was bored.”

“Find a way to get un-bored, then,” Taemin says before he can stop himself, like that’s ever been as easy for Jonghyun as making himself unhappy is. There’s no part of Jonghyun Taemin can reach for without it being weird, so he turns his ankle in the circle of Jonghyun’s hand, squishing his toes into his side. “You wrote a whole song called ‘Inspiration,’ hyung.”

When that doesn’t get him an answer, he pokes Jonghyun again. It’s his own fault when all of the sudden Jonghyun pulls on his leg, dragging him forward. For one second Taemin’s heart flies up his throat as he slips away from the wall, laughter dying, but then Jonghyun’s hand is there to keep his head above the water, warm and firm on the small of Taemin’s back. Jonghyun is right there too, heart beating under Taemin’s palm, dark eyes smiling, so close that each word gusts against Taemin’s lips as he asks, “You want to know what it was about?”

They’re going to have to get out soon before they overheat. At least Taemin is. He could pull away, climb out of the bath, just say _no, I’m not curious,_ not, “You mean who? It wasn’t that long ago, I still remember your girlfriend from back then.” Taemin flounders. “Maybe that’s your problem, right there. The meaning can change.”

For the longest moment in Taemin’s life, Jonghyun has nothing to say to that. Then, finally, as he reaches up to tuck a strand of Taemin’s hair behind his ear, “My problem is that I can’t.”

Taemin's heart squeezes down to nothing. “Hyung…”

“It should be almost time for dinner,” Jonghyun says over him. He smiles at the look on Taemin’s face, brushing his thumb over his nose and releasing him. “I just thought I’d warn you, just in case you don’t want to get caught bathing by Obaa-san.”

By the time she walks in Taemin has been safely dressed again for half an hour. In the dining room, she serves up the kind of multicourse meal he missed to go shopping in the morning, so beautiful Taemin should probably feel way worse about digging in, then lays out their futons while they eat. Jonghyun goes for one last dip in the dark and offers to roll Taemin out to the bath too, but it’s so much safer to cocoon himself under his blanket, even if he still sees Jonghyun naked when he closes his eyes. It’s funny how quickly years and years of bathhouses and changing rooms and shared bathrooms and Jonghyun sleeping nude in the next bed over all turned to bubbles. He has to build up his tolerance again.

And Jonghyun has to not do things like walk in dripping wet from the bath, yukata flapping open as he wanders around brushing his teeth. Taemin squeezes his eyes shut before then, but he hears it whisper to the floor all the same, before Jonghyun climbs into bed.

“Are you sleeping?” Jonghyun’s blanket rustles as he turns towards Taemin. If Taemin opened his eyes his face would be right there. “Hmm? Taeminnie?”

“Not anymore,” Taemin lies.

Jonghyun laughs softly. The lady laid their futons out so close that he barely has to stretch to reach Taemin, pinching his cheek, probably watching as Taemin’s mouth curves into an unwilling smile. “Your breathing would have changed.”

Then why ask at all? He and Jonghyun have never needed excuses like that to break the silence between them. Except Taemin’s skin is buzzing and his head is empty and there are these weird fluttering things inside his stomach that should have died off like fifteen years ago, and just opening his mouth feels like stepping out into nothing. “I don’t want to wake up tomorrow.”

“You want to stay like this?” Jonghyun murmurs.

“Forever,” Taemin lets himself say, stomach clenching, toes curling around the word. Instead of rolling over and hiding he squeezes his eyes shut again. “Is it too hot in here for you? You can turn the heat down, I don’t mind.”

He hears Jonghyun shake his head, hair whispering across his pillow. “Not after the bath, it’s nice.” He can hear the smile in Jonghyun’s voice. “You must be really tired.”

“Not from today, from the rest of my life. What about you?”

“I sleep so much these days I get tired from that.”

Taemin doesn’t know how to tell Jonghyun that’s better for him than not sleeping at all. Back when they shared a room, Taemin would fall asleep and wake up in the morning to find Jonghyun’s bed still empty, and not just on the nights Jonghyun spent with his girlfriend or the nights he went clubbing. A lot of times he was on his computer in the kitchen, where the glow and the sound leaking from his headphones wouldn’t bother Taemin, or sitting on the couch watching cartoons and eating cereal with Minho, sweaty and winded from being dragged along on Minho’s pre-dawn run. Half the times Taemin snuck in after Jonghyun finally shut himself up in their room to sleep, Jonghyun was just lying there with daylight burning through his eyelids. _What are you looking for, Taemin-ah? Tell me and I’ll tell you where it is. Hyung is the world’s leading expert on putting Lee Taemin’s shit away._

Taemin takes a peek at Jonghyun. They’re years and thousands of miles apart, but somehow Jonghyun still looks the same as he did then, hugging his pillow with his blanket pooled around his waist. Except maybe Taemin is actually in danger of Jonghyun falling asleep on him before he can say this.

“Thank you, hyung.”

Jonghyun is the one who told him to say that earlier, but all he says now is, “I should be the one thanking you. You saw, I was about to go alone.”

“You knew I’d come. At least you should have.” There’s this weird too-big feeling fighting it’s way out of Taemin’s chest. He has to hide his smile in his pillow. “We probably had more fun than Jonginnie today.”

Jonghyun opens his eyes, holding Taemin’s. There’s this tiny smirk playing about his mouth. Playing with Taemin. “Not tonight, though.”

Taemin can’t stop his whole body from going hot, any more than he can stop everything inside him from slowly freezing in place again. He doesn’t know how far he’d have to run for that feeling to go away, or if he should just stay in place long enough for it to overtake him. All he knows is that he doesn’t want Jonghyun to see it in his face. What if it looks half as ugly as it feels?

So he rolls over and tells the ceiling, “She’s met his parents and I’ve only seen her once. I tried so hard to get her to like me. I’ve never tried at all before, I never had to. He was never this serious.”

“It doesn’t mean she hates you, Taemin-ah.” Jonghyun hesitates, dark eyes lingering on Taemin’s face. “It could be Jonginnie, it could be he doesn’t like sharing either of you.”

“I’m not a baby, hyung. I can handle him choosing his girlfriend over me.”

Jonghyun’s expression doesn’t change. “It’s okay if you can’t.”

“I’m not jealous.”

He’s not mad either, not at Jonghyun or Jongin or anyone but himself, so why does his voice sound like _that?_

“You sure?” is all Jonghyun says to that. Then, in this voice that cuts off Taemin’s air, “I would be. I get that way all the time.”

Taemin’s stomach tightens all on its own, and the words taste like lies even as he says them: “Well, I don’t.”

Jonghyun doesn’t even blink, propping his head up on his hand and staring down at Taemin. “When it’s me, I always start out scared you’re going to hate them, or hate me for choosing someone like them—”

“Why would I?” Taemin cuts in a little too quickly.

“But then if you try too hard with them, I hate seeing that, too. You stop looking at me.” Jonghyun pauses, holding Taemin’s eyes, pinning him in place. “And when it’s you…”

“You always hate my boyfriends.” Taemin shouldn’t say this, he’s spent fifteen years not going there, they both have, but. “Part of me always hopes you will.”

“Why, you’re looking for an excuse to dump them?” Jonghyun’s mouth curls, hot under Taemin’s skin. “You can use me for that, I don’t mind.”

“I have better taste in men than you do in women.”

The retort is out of Taemin’s mouth before he can stop himself, but he stops regretting it as soon as Jonghyun’s smirk shows teeth. “Uh huh. What about that one guy you dated, the one who told you he was an actor.”

Why is he bringing Sungwoo up now when Taemin hasn’t even thought about him in years? Not even to masturbate. But whatever. “He was.”

“He was an extra,” Jonghyun corrects him immediately, instead of letting it go. “Minho told me he thought having abs would land him lead roles. He told him to work on his technique but he kept asking for workout tips.”

“He didn’t even need them,” Taemin snaps. His abs were so tight Taemin could practically bounce off them, and sometimes he left bruises on Taemin’s hips that lingered for days. Jonghyun would know, he must have seen them. Whatever he sees in Taemin’s face right now has his eyes narrowing, mouth thinning, hand curling into a fist on his blanket.

“Is that attractive to you? Someone with nothing going on inside.” Jonghyun doesn’t even let Taemin answer. “What did you two even talk about?”

He reads it in Taemin’s face without him saying it out loud: _We didn’t._ Not even dirty talk, Sungwoo sucked at that and Taemin can’t come up with it on his own, and the longer they dated the clearer it got that sex was the only thing they had in common, but Jonghyun doesn’t need to know that, and he’ll never get it anyway. The words shoot up his chest and out, “Not work, at least. Dating someone from corporate sounds way worse to me.”

And breaking up with them after two years is way, way worse still. Yeah, Taemin sucks. He rolls onto his stomach to squish down any guilt at what that might be doing to Jonghyun’s face while he can’t bear to look. He only has to lie there for a second before Jonghyun reaches out to touch his cheek, though, so gentle Taemin forgets himself and turns into Jonghyun’s hand. Jonghyun catches his eye like nothing.

“The difference is that I pick women who are too good for me. You only go for men who don’t deserve you, and even then, only if you know it won’t work out,” Jonghyun says. “You’re too scared to fall in love.”

“I’ve been in love before, hyung. That’s not something you can control.” The admission is like stepping out into nothing, but even if Jonghyun will never know, he’s still here to catch Taemin’s fall, hand so big and warm. “And that’s not it, anyway. I’m fine being single. What scares me is being alone.”

“They’re not the same thing to you?” Taemin shakes his head, cheek rubbing Jonghyun’s palm weirdly, Jonghyun’s thumb pressing into the corner of his lips. Jonghyun doesn’t move, staring into his face like he’s trying to see inside Taemin. “You don’t need someone?”

“Not the way I need my friends, or my family—”

“Or me?”

“And the other hyungs,” Taemin adds, heart skipping a beat. “I’m gonna get left behind, though, that’s the problem.”

Jonghyun slips his hand up to stroke Taemin’s hair back from his forehead, before rolling onto his back and telling the ceiling, “I used to dream of my wedding night.”

“I know, hyung. You wrote a song about that, too.” Taemin nestles closer, eyes travelling over Jonghyun’s profile, heart in his throat. “And now?”

“Now, it’s more like…I’m so sick of trying. I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this before I start to give up on myself again. Sometimes when I work out I wonder who I’m taking care of my body for.”

“And then you look in the mirror,” is probably the worst thing Taemin could have said, but it gets Jonghyun to smile. This probably won’t, but…“I hate looking at myself now. I always did, kind of, but it’s gotten so much worse. I had this thought the other day that it’s good my cheeks are so fat, that maybe that’ll help with wrinkles.”

Jonghyun turns right back over, staring into Taemin’s face as his own darkens. “SM isn’t pushing you to get injections or anything, right?”

Taemin was talking about himself, not them, but Jonghyun needs an answer or he won’t close his eyes all night. “Not yet. Maybe closer to my comeback they will, so when I’m like 80. By then it’ll be too late.”

It’s not funny to Jonghyun, not even remotely, everything about his expression tells Taemin that, but his shoulders relax and his fingers unclench in his blanket.

“Whenever I told you you’re beautiful, you always used to tell me you knew,” Jonghyun says. “That was so cute.”

What about him, who is he to talk?

“You never used to say things like that, either, you used to flash your abs at anyone who stood still long enough.” Taemin hesitates, not sure how to say this, but the longer he stares at Jonghyun, black hair spilled across his pillow, moonlight kissing his skin, the less it helps. “Isn’t it enough to do it for yourself?”

“I don’t need a six-pack for my health, Taemin-ah.”

That’s not what Taemin meant, and anyway, “You’re the one who always wanted muscles so badly. You used to do crunches in the waiting room at music shows, remember? You kept working out in the computer room of our first dorm, too, until the other hyungs almost killed you.”

“That all happened like twenty years ago,” Jonghyun replies, not amused. “Tell me how good I look for my age or something.”

“You know that already, you have to.” Taemin’s ears are tingling, but it’s okay in the dark. Jonghyun won’t know as long as his voice comes out normal. “You just want someone else to say it, right? Fine. You have a good body, hyung.”

“And you have a type,” Jonghyun says mercilessly, biting back a smile to stare at Taemin some more. “Is it better than all those dumb guys you’ve dated?”

He’s really going to make Taemin say it out loud. All their lives, that kind of thing has come as easy as breathing to Jonghyun. _Taemin-ah, you’re beautiful. You’re cute. You’re pretty. I like everything about you. Taemin-ah, I love you._ It’s not that Taemin can’t find those same words within himself. With every beat of his heart, he can feel them. Putting them out there for Jonghyun to take would mean giving Jonghyun parts of himself he’s never shown anyone, and if it means less to him than it does to Taemin….parts of himself he’ll never get back. Taemin should roll onto his other side, draw the blanket over his head and trap his words inside, at least close his eyes, but he can’t make himself look away.

“I didn’t mean it like that. Just…I used to wish I looked like you. Not just your abs, your shoulders, your back, everything. You were the man I wanted to be.” Jonghyun’s eyes are so dark Taemin is going to fall into them if he’s not careful, which he’s not. He struggles for more words blindly, anything. “It sounds bad that I keep using past tense, but that’s because I changed, not because you did.”

The ghost of that not-smile from before is playing about Jonghyun’s lips. “I’m not your ideal man anymore? Your ideal type.”

“Now you’re making it sound weird,” Taemin blurts out, even though that was him, he’s the one saying these things. “I became okay with being myself, I meant.”

Jonghyun slides his hand across the fabric until his fingertips brush Taemin’s, sudden and electric. Taemin should stick his hand under his pillow, ball it into a fist, anything but lie here and try to remember how to breathe while Jonghyun tells him the way he’s told him a thousand times before, “You’re perfect the way you are, Taeminnie. You’ve always been my ideal, too. I’ve never seen anyone like you.”

“Fairies aren’t supposed to age.”

It’s supposed to be a joke, but it doesn’t sound like one. As he withdraws his hand, Jonghyun covers it with his own, big and warm and sure, cutting off all the air in Taemin’s lungs.

“If I have to get old you do, too,” Jonghyun says. “Otherwise I’d look at you and you’d never look back at me.”

“You keep saying things like that.”

Jonghyun holds his eyes. “Because I mean them.”

So does Taemin. Always.

“I thought you’d ask like what or something,” he says with his last breath, faltering at the look on Jonghyun’s face.

“I’m not going to make you say it, Taeminnie.”

Taemin turns his hand in Jonghyun’s grip, lacing their fingers together. “Is this still a date?”

“Until we fall asleep.”

Taemin leans in and kisses Jonghyun on the mouth.

Jonghyun’s lips are so soft Taemin can’t breathe, and his gasp of surprise leaves Taemin with this strange airless feeling, like sunlight melting inside him, but with his eyes squeezed shut like this, all he can see is black. As he draws away, Jonghyun’s hand comes up to hold him in place, big and warm and firm on the back of Taemin’s head, his whole world, at least until Jonghyun’s lips find his again. Softer than before even, slow and lingering, angling Taemin’s head just so, fitting their mouths together like they were meant to be. This is real. His heart is beating so fast it’s leaving him behind, his body is burning beneath his blanket, and Jonghyun is kissing him. This is a kiss. Taemin’s first one was years and years ago, with a girl whose face he can’t remember, and there have been so many others, but now Jonghyun’s tongue is teasing his mouth open and somehow his world is ending. He doesn’t know where to put his hands when Jonghyun is naked under there, and he’s holding on too tight, pushing too hard, draping himself over Jonghyun’s chest, fingers closing into fists in the mattress by Jonghyun’s head, and he can’t breathe and he can’t.

Jonghyun’s fingers tighten in his hair, pulling him back, just hard enough to hurt. Air bursts into Taemin’s lungs, sweet, dizzying, coming back up in sobs as Jonghyun’s hands cup Taemin’s face, holding him together while his eyes take Taemin apart, darker than the night outside. When Taemin lowers his head, Jonghyun lets him, meeting his lips with this tiny noise. Their mouths move together, falling into it, kiss deepening, Jonghyun’s tongue touching his, flirting, teasing, there and gone and there again, taking Taemin to the very edge, until Jonghyun’s teeth close around his bottom lip, just barely biting down, then a little harder, flattening his tongue to it and sucking. Jonghyun’s hand slides down his neck and into the collar of his yukata, forcing it open wider, palm so broad and rough, burning into Taemin’s skin even as the cotton whispers across it, slipping over his shoulder and baring it to the cool air, hot and cold and soft and hard, so much Taemin can’t keep it all inside him. His face flames at the sound of his own moan, loud and breathy, and then Jonghyun’s fingers close around his shoulder, digging into his flesh, and next thing his world flips over and he’s on his back again, Jonghyun braced over him, pinning his wrists to the mattress.

He’s so beautiful in the moonlight it almost hurts to look at him, even when Taemin has seen it all a million times before. Dark hair hanging into his perfect face, endless shoulders, muscles in his arms bunching as he shifts his weight, smooth firm skin everywhere. _Everywhere._ Touching him might kill Taemin, and yet, it’s so hard to lie still in Jonghyun’s hold, harder when he finally returns his gaze to Jonghyun’s face and Jonghyun keeps him waiting, lingering on Taemin’s body. His yukata is gaping open, nipples tightening in the cool air, breath quickening under Jonghyun’s eyes, dick throbbing against Jonghyun’s thigh, and if he would have done anything moments ago to put his hands on Jonghyun, all he wants now is to cover himself, even though Jonghyun has seen it all before too. He lies there and lets Jonghyun look, lets him look and look and look, until the shame burns away and all that’s left is wanting. He rubs his foot up Jonghyun’s leg, Jonghyun’s hair rasping against his skin, arching up against him, straining up for a kiss. Jonghyun barely makes him work for it in the end, meeting him halfway, moaning into his mouth, tongue and teeth. When he lowers himself against Taemin, finally Taemin feels it. Hot and thick and hard, pressing into his thigh, precome soaking into the cotton, then into Taemin’s skin. When Taemin presses back Jonghyun makes this noise, thrusting against him, and then it’s all Taemin can do to hang onto him, sleeves pooling at his elbows as he hooks his arms around Jonghyun’s shoulders, robe falling open as he wraps his leg around his waist, until finally Jonghyun settles between his thighs, forcing them open wider. And then he moves, sending Taemin so hot he sees white. When Jonghyun breaks their kiss it’s only to breathe, harsh and hot against Taemin’s lips, but Taemin doesn’t need air, only him, and he’d do anything, digging his nails into Jonghyun’s back, his heel into his ass, begging, “Please, hyung. Please. I need it.”

_Anything._

Instead of giving him his mouth again, Jonghyun lifts away, dark eyes, mouth curling into a secret smile, hand slipping between their bodies to find the tie of Taemin’s yukata. One tug and it comes loose, and Taemin is back to feeling more naked than he ever has in his life. He pulls at Jonghyun, desperate for skin-on-skin, his mouth on his, for him. Jonghyun’s lips brush over his, there and gone, before he trails them down Taemin’s neck, light and soft and barely there when all Taemin wants is hard and rough and just. Tangling his fingers in Jonghyun’s hair gets this low bit-off moan out of Jonghyun, and then he pulls and just like that, he has Jonghyun’s teeth in his neck, his tongue pressing into his skin, sucking marks into it, harsh and hot and wet, straight to Taemin’s dick. He only realizes he’s hanging on too tight when Jonghyun lets out this low pained sound and bites down harder, flash of white hot pain-pleasure before Taemin comes back to himself. Did Taemin hurt him, the bad kind of hurt?

Heart pounding, he uncurls his fingers, stroking Jonghyun’s hair clumsily, but then Jonghyun lifts his mouth from Taemin’s neck to stare up at him, eye burning black as he slides down his body, kissing and licking and biting his way across Taemin’s skin until he finds Taemin’s nipple. It’s already so hard it aches, air so cool and Jonghyun’s breath so hot, caressing it, before Jonghyun’s lips close around it and Taemin arches off the mattress. His hands form fists at Jonghyun’s back as Jonghyun suckles it, flicking his tongue over it, wet slick sounds that destroy Taemin. Jonghyun’s hand slides up his other side, palm so warm and rough rubbing over Taemin’s nipple, fingers pressing into Taemin’s flesh, almost squeezing. Taemin’s face flames and his thighs tremble and every muscle in his body goes weak, and he should be asking Jonghyun, _Did you forget who you’re fucking? It’s me, hyung,_ but that’s before Jonghyun drags his tongue down Taemin’s stomach and sticks his tongue in his navel, and Taemin cries out, all words forgotten. The answer is no, anyway.

“I didn’t know you were so sensitive there.” Somehow Jonghyun’s voice sends Taemin hotter than anything else. Jonghyun lays his head on Taemin’s thigh, each word caressing Taemin’s dick, hand spanning over Taemin’s stomach, so, so close to where he wants it, thumb tracing the crease between his hip and thigh, one fingertip pressing into his navel with each breath, lightning in Taemin’s spine. It’s random but it’s on purpose. It’s _Jonghyun._ “I always knew you’d be loud, though. You keep so much in all the time, something has to get it out of you. Someone.” Jonghyun half-smiles, teeth grazing Taemin’s thigh. “You could say my name more. Hmm? Say it. Please, Taeminnie.”

That’s deeper inside Taemin, buried under years and years of other men, his heart breaking and healing over. It should be so much harder to get out, Taemin made it that way, but all Jonghyun has to do is slide his hand down to the inside of Taemin’s thigh and push it wide open and kiss him there, and, “Jonghyunnie hyung.” Jonghyun nips at him, skin so soft and tender that the first hint of teeth breaks Taemin. “Jonghyun hyung, please,” as Jonghyun worries at it, lips and tongue and teeth and, “Please, hyung, please.” One last kiss and Jonghyun lifts away, breath washing over his skin, and. _“Hyung.”_ And Jonghyun drags his tongue up the underside of Taemin’s dick. “Hyung!”

Jonghyun’s hands come down, pinning Taemin’s hips to the mattress, but his eyes are what hold Taemin in place, so dark as he leans in and presses his lips to the head of Taemin’s dick. They’re going to be the last thing Taemin sees. He’s going to die here, the way he almost died earlier in the bath, Jonghyun’s touch and his eyes and face and his mouth. Taemin jerks helplessly in his hold as Jonghyun takes him in, tight wet heat, tongue like velvet, pressed to the underside of his dick, drawing noises out of him he didn’t even know he could make. It doesn’t matter that Jonghyun doesn’t know what he’s doing, that he’s struggling to take Taemin deeper, that his teeth graze Taemin’s dick and wrench Taemin’s voice sideways, pained cry broken between his teeth, that Jonghyun has to pull off to breathe, licking and kissing apologies into Taemin’s skin, twisting him up so tight inside he can’t even breathe. It’s just that he’s doing it. He wants it. Sloppy and eager, lips stretched over him, moaning around him, bobbing his head, sucking and sucking, hand curling around the base of Taemin’s dick, palm rough as his mouth is soft, tight and hot and oh fuck, Taemin wants it too, so bad he can’t, he’s gonna.

Jonghyun ignores the first few tugs at his hair, moaning again, tightening his lips around him, _sucking._ Taemin has to pull. The air is so cool it almost stings against his dick, wet and throbbing, so so so close. Jonghyun takes one look at what he did to Taemin’s face and crawls back up his body, giving him his mouth again, lips slick and swollen crushed against Taemin’s, opening for Taemin’s tongue at the barest hint of teeth, letting Taemin taste himself.

Taemin only pulls away to say it, string of spit forming between their mouths. “I need you inside me.”

Jonghyun shudders above him. “Did you bring lube?”

Does he think Taemin planned for this to happen? Although…Jonghyun watches his face as the thought forms, eyes narrowing at Taemin before Taemin can even defend himself. “I was already packed.”

“For Jejudo?” When he arches up for another kiss, Jonghyun lifts away, staring into his face. “With Jonginnie.”

“We booked separate rooms,” Taemin shouldn’t need to explain, so why is he, why are they even _talking?_ “I didn’t know if you had, I had no time to think.” Jonghyun thrusts against him, their dicks sliding together, so slow and deliberate Taemin forgets every single other word. “Hyung.”

He has Jonghyun naked in his arms, rutting against him, and somehow Jonghyun’s stupid smirk still hooks in his stomach, hot under his skin. “It never stopped you before. Have you forgotten that time I walked in on you? There were a lot more where I almost did.”

“I should have just done it in the shower all the time like you.”

Jonghyun nips Taemin’s upper lip, not-smiling, but he lets Taemin wriggle out from under him, eyes following him as he knee walks over to his suitcase in the near corner, yukata slipping down over his shoulder and hanging off his arms. He watches as Taemin digs frantically, shirts, pants, underwear flying, accusing him, “You were going to tease me all day and then go back to your room and play with yourself,” until something big and heavy and plastic rolls out of the mess of clothes. Taemin’s dildo. Taemin snatches it up dumbly, ears burning along with the rest of him, especially when he looks up and finds Jonghyun sitting back on his haunches with his dick standing out, thick and flush with blood. Staring. “Or fuck yourself. How big is that thing?”

“The biggest size they had,” but how does that matter right now. Taemin leaves it lying on the floor, slipping out of his yukata finally and crawling back to Jonghyun, little bottle wedged in his hand, legs and arms gone weak with want. It barely takes any strength to pull Jonghyun back down on top of him, and none at all to open his legs as wide as he can, cradling Jonghyun’s hips between his thighs. “You don’t have to worry about hurting me.”

“Are you sure you even need me?” Jonghyun says, this crazy almost-laughter in his voice. He drags his hand over the back of Taemin’s thigh, fingers digging into his flesh, pushing it up past his waist, Taemin’s muscles just barely burning while the rest of his body is on fire. “Hmm?”

 _“Yes,_ hyung, so please.”

“How much? How much do you need me?”

Jonghyun shifts his hips so that the head of his dick presses against Taemin’s hole.

“I can’t breathe without you.”

For one long moment, Jonghyun takes that in, eyes darkening impossibly. Then he sits back, leaving Taemin so frustrated he’s dizzy with it. The sound of the cap snapping open hits Taemin’s whole body. He wanted to do it, he wants it. Wants. As he struggles up onto his elbows, Jonghyun squirts lube onto his palm, taking himself in his hand and slicking up his length, bottom lip caught between his teeth, brow furrowed, the kind of face that steals the breath from Taemin’s body. Taemin’s own dick throbs with each twist of Jonghyun’s wrist, muscles flickering in his arms, chest rising and falling, abs glistening with a thin sheen of sweat, but he twists his hands in the mattress and waits. He doesn’t know if it’s been a few seconds or an eternity before he feels Jonghyun’s touch again, hands so big and warm and sure, sliding up the backs of his thighs, pressing Taemin’s legs up over his shoulders, spreading him wide open and leaving his hole exposed to the open air. Jonghyun takes his dick in hand again, but not to line himself up, to tease Taemin, rubbing the head over his hole, smearing precome into his skin. Taemin should be rolling them over and sitting on it, not wriggling closer helplessly, whining, clenching down on nothing, until finally, _finally,_ he feels it.

Just the tip, just barely pressing inside him, stretching his hole open, and every muscle in his body tightens up, back arching, hands fisting in the mattress. He needs to relax. Breathe. This is so far from his first time, so what if it’s been years since the last, and he just told Jonghyun he knew what he was doing, and now maybe Jonghyun will feel his thighs trembling against his chest as he pushes inside him, folding him in half, planting his hands on either side of Taemin’s head. Staring down into his face. Taemin stares back. Inch by inch, Jonghyun’s dick splits him open, thick and hot, until finally his hips are flush with Taemin’s ass and he’s so deep inside it feels like he’ll poke out Taemin’s stomach, and when he leans down to kiss Taemin, maybe Jonghyun tastes himself. Taemin reaches up with shaky hands to comb Jonghyun’s hair out of his eyes, cupping his face. He moans into Taemin’s mouth, helpless, loud, fucking his tongue into it as his hips grind against Taemin’s ass, pressing that little bit deeper, filling Taemin up so full he’s scared he’s going to do something crazy like cry. He lets himself moan instead, this breathless needy thing, sucking on Jonghyun’s tongue, wet and messy, desperate for it to be his dick instead somehow, as thick and heavy on his tongue as it is inside him.

And then Jonghyun starts to pull out and Taemin forgets everything, _everything,_ clenching around the head, sobbing for breath, lips crushed artlessly against Jonghyun’s, until Jonghyun pushes back inside, forcing Taemin open around him. Again. Slow and deep, so empty he could die and then full to bursting. Taemin slips his hands down out of Jonghyun’s hair, locking his hands together at the back of Jonghyun’s neck, hanging on to him with all he has as Jonghyun builds up a rhythm, stomach brushing Taemin’s dick with each thrust, mattress rustling beneath them, wet slick noises as he fucks in and out of Taemin’s hole, his hips smacking against Taemin’s ass, the sound of it stinging more than Taemin’s skin. Finally Taemin needs air more than he needs Jonghyun, just for a second, just, before he feels Jonghyun’s mouth on his neck, hot and wet, teeth breaking his skin, dragging a cry out of him. Taemin opens his eyes to find Jonghyun staring down at him.

“My name,” Jonghyun demands breathlessly, but then he’s the one who says, “Please, baby.”

Taemin’s body goes white hot all on its own, and then Jonghyun angles his hips just so, hitting _that_ spot, and again, again again again. “Jonghyun hyung!”

“Is this what you needed?”

“Hyung.”

“You needed my dick.”

“Yes, hyung.”

“You need me.”

“You said I have you,” Taemin says senselessly, “you said always. Is this what you meant?”

Jonghyun hisses at the feel of Taemin’s nails sinking into his back, shuddering above him, face twisting, fucking and fucking and fucking into him, rougher, harder, the force of his thrusts pushing Taemin up the mattress. Taemin’s legs slip off his shoulders, caught in the crook of his elbows, splayed wide open, muscles melted away as he lies there and takes it. “Hyung. Jonghyunnie hyung. Hyung, please.” Takes Jonghyun. Each time Jonghyun’s dick pushes inside him it takes him further and further past the edge, but he clings on, burning up, numb with pleasure, until finally Jonghyun slides one hand down Taemin’s stomach, taking Taemin in his hand before Taemin can stop him. Taemin tangles their fingers together, not sure if it’s to guide him or drag his hand away, but it’s so warm and rough and Jonghyun is so big and thick and hot inside him, impossibly bigger and thicker and hotter when Taemin tightens around him, so beautiful, staring down at him, dark dark eyes fucking him so hard there’s nothing else left inside him, just Jonghyun, _hyunghyunghyung,_ and all it takes is one pull.

“Jonghyunnie hyung.”

Loud and messy, hips jerking, voice breaking, harder than he ever has in his life, Taemin comes. Jonghyun, too. Hot and wet, so deep it turns Taemin’s insides white. For endless moments, that’s all he sees. Just white.

When he opens his eyes again, Jonghyun is still there with him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to reiterate that I had already written this before I posted the first chapter - after this, I'm going to post as I write, so updates will be slower! Thank you for understanding. :)

Taemin wakes up.

Sunlight is pouring into the room, so bright it hurts to open his eyes. He should’ve turned his face into his pillow instead. What time is it? Definitely way later than it should be. Where is his phone? Jonghyun said their flight leaves in the afternoon, and they have a two-hour train ride—

_Jonghyun._

So warm and solid and naked pressed flush to Taemin’s back, arm slung over his waist. For endless moments, Taemin lies paralyzed as Jonghyun’s chest rises and falls against him, his breath tickling Taemin’s nape, and the memory of last night returns to his body, raw and wrung out from pleasure. There were so many things he wanted to do and try, fifteen years of fantasies spilling over, so desperate for Jonghyun’s cock any way he could have it, his hand, his mouth, his ass, but he fell asleep with Jonghyun inside him towards dawn, after the third and final time. He’s still so thick and hot even when he’s soft, filling Taemin up like no one else ever has.

He barely has to move for Jonghyun to slip out of him, flipping the blanket back and picking up Jonghyun’s arm as gently as he can, wriggling out from under it. Jonghyun groans and Taemin freezes, before Jonghyun rolls onto his stomach, into the warmth Taemin left behind. He’s so beautiful laying there that it takes a minute longer for Taemin to be able to move again, bed hair, sun-kissed skin, broad broad back, the delicate curve of his spine, his hand lying on the pillow. But only a minute. Taemin has had fifteen years of practice looking away. Jonghyun’s come dribbles down his thigh as he crawls over to his suitcase to search for something to wear, the feel of it sending his stomach fluttering, even if he’d do anything to keep it in inside him. He’d give anything to crawl back in Jonghyun’s arms and pretend to sleep until Jonghyun wakes up. It’s so much scarier this way, creeping across the room towards the shower, at least until his foot hits something solid, sending it skittering away as he just barely catches his balance, blinded by pain. His dildo. Fuck. When his eyes fly back to Jonghyun, Jonghyun meets them.

For a moment that lasts lifetimes, they stare at each other. Somehow, Taemin feels even more naked under his eyes than he did last night, body decorated with the marks Jonghyun left on him, bruises and hickeys, thighs slick with his come, ass sore. Somehow he thinks he’d rather die than try to talk like this. The strength drains out of his legs as he heads for the bathroom, but that’s as far as he can run, and once the water runs hot enough, he has to fight with himself to step under the water, wash last night away. The door snicks open while he’s soaping up his arms and chest, sending his heart racing, and he turns to find Jonghyun stepping into the shower.

He reaches for Taemin before he can try again to find words, remember what those even are, taking the body wash from him and taking over. His hands glide over Taemin’s skin, so big and warm and gentle Taemin could die, water plastering his hair to his forehead as he works. Taemin only reaches up to comb it back out of his eyes, but then Jonghyun shoots him a secret smile, and his hand strays to the shampoo. Jonghyun stands still, eyes sliding shut as Taemin works it into his scalp, white and foamy and citrus smelling, tipping his head back obediently to rinse it out, baring the long line of his neck. He doesn’t ask for Taemin’s dirty thoughts when he opens his eyes to find him half-hard, probably because he is too. Suddenly the only thing in Taemin’s head is sinking to his knees and taking him into his mouth and bringing him the rest of the way, so thick and heavy on his tongue, and when Jonghyun takes him by his shoulders and turns him around, Taemin’s suddenly so desperate he can taste it, dying for the feel of it against his ass, rubbing up the crack, head catching against his hole, just anything. Jonghyun’s hands in his hair crush him with disappointment, but they leave him clean and whole.

Once they’ve packed, there’s no time for anything else. Somehow Taemin only bathed once this whole stay, but it takes him until they’ve caught the train and found their seats for him to even think of that. In a week, he probably won’t remember the name of the ryokan or what he ate when he and Jonghyun went out into the market, and in a month, Obaa-san’s face will have faded from his memory. He’s already forgotten what he and Jongin were going to do in Jejudo. Last night he forgot that Jejudo even existed, along with every single thing outside of that room. The one thing that will stay with him forever is Jonghyun.

Even now, his body reminds him what happened with every breath, so sore and so empty at the same time, and Jonghyun is right here with him, pressed together from shoulder to hip. He bought Taemin bread and banana milk at the train station, and whenever Taemin tears him off a piece or gives him a sip, he takes it, until nothing remains between them but silence, and Taemin is left wondering if the aftertaste is the same for Jonghyun as it is for him, strange and bittersweet. If he leaned in and kissed him, pretended those few inches are all that’s keeping them apart, he could find out.

The first hour flies and the second one ticks down. Towns and countryside, hills and forest. Soon enough they’ll reach Tokyo, cityscape closing in around them again, until they get off at the airport. And from there, Seoul. Taemin’s life. Jonghyun’s.

When Taemin thinks he’ll go crazy from checking the clock, hoping against hope that it hasn’t moved, he lays his head on Jonghyun’s shoulder and closes his eyes. Jonghyun lets him do it, even though he’ll know from Taemin’s breathing that he isn’t asleep. Maybe he’ll know that he isn’t even trying.

Time passes. 

Manager hyung waits for him out front like normal on Monday morning. He doesn’t know that Taemin spent most of Sunday night hovering over his name in his phone, trying to come up with an excuse to push his meeting with Creative back that he’d let himself take, or that he spent the rest of it not sleeping. After six years of living alone, his apartment was too quiet.

The ride to SM is quiet for the most part, too. Manager hyung never bothers with the radio in the morning, just the blackest coffee he can find, and Taemin might as well save his voice to talk all day. They probably spent all weekend working on things with actual deadlines, and they’re probably all gathered in the meeting room already, going over today’s strategy for putting him off. Since the last time those four walls close in around him, Taemin hasn’t done a thing but breathe. And fuck Jonghyun. That too. Just the thought hits him like a wall of heat, flushing his face red hot, and the only way he knows to deal with it is to turn to his window, pressing his cheek to the cool glass. Would Manager hyung think it was weird if he opened it? Just a crack.

“What’s that on your neck?” Manager hyung says suddenly.

Taemin’s hand flies up, finding the mark Jonghyun left on instinct. He spent an eternity in front of the mirror last night, examining it from all different angles, pressing his fingers into it, but somehow it left his head by the time he got ready to go this morning. Whatever. He’s way past the point in his career where anyone at SM would dare say anything to him about it.

Manager hyung grins over at him. “Is there something I should know about~?”

“No.”

Ten years ago, he would have told Taemin, _Dispatch has a policy not to out gay idols, but you don’t want to test them, Taeminnie. Or SM._ Today it’s just, “I don’t need to tell you to be careful.”

It’s too late for that. Way too late.

Taemin finds everything exactly where he left it, Creative, the cafeteria, the roof, the hole where Jonghyun and the others should be. His apartment is just as silent when he gets home and his bed is just as lonely, and nothing could fill the emptiness inside him. He doesn’t even bother with toys. Just presses his fingers into the bruises Jonghyun left on his body, fingers too small to line up, and tries to retrace his touch. The ones on his hips are probably from the second time, when Jonghyun put him on all fours and took him from behind. More like Taemin put himself, sticking his ass in the air, face hidden in the blanket as he reached back to spread himself open. He was so wet from lube and Jonghyun’s come it only took one thrust, long and smooth and filling him to bursting, Jonghyun telling him, _You were made for me._

The next day, Jonghyun tells him, _kibummie rejected everything we got him._ Taemin sees the text on the way to work. He turns his phone off and lasts until lunch, another cold winter day on the roof, just like the one that started all this.

_wouldnt let me take any of it back either_

_he asked after you_

_arent u curious what i said~_

And then, from hours later:

_are u mad? dont be please_

_im sorry if i scared u i wasnt thinking_

_i wouldnt tell without talking to u_

_he mostly wanted to hear about work_

And an hour after that…

_fighting taeminnie^^_

Maybe Taemin would have had a heart attack if he'd read the first message earlier, but that would have been better than feeling another piece of it break off. No matter how tight he hugs his knees to his chest, or how long he holds his breath, the ache doesn’t fade, and the thoughts don’t go away. After Jonghyun got caught with Shin Sekyung, he was scared to even leave the dorm at night, but what scared him more was being trapped inside forever, and after they broke up, it only took him a few months to move on and find someone new. He told Taemin once, _I know I can’t do whatever I want, no one can, but if I don’t do any of it, it’s not my life anymore. I’m not me._ But now, with Taemin, even Jonghyun knows better. It doesn’t matter that their careers as idols have slowed down, or that it’s been years since they came back as a group, and it might be years still. Shinee is more than a name or a legacy, it’s seventeen years of Taemin’s life. Twenty, counting training. If he destroyed that, there’d be nothing left of him. Less than nothing, without the others. Without _Jonghyun._ As it is, the closer they get to the end, the scarier it gets, staring into nothing.

Dating Taemin would look the same for Jonghyun. Maybe not right now, when all he can see is Taemin, his naked body, his face when he comes, the way he looks taking his dick, his smile and his laugh and his hand in Jonghyun’s, but later. In the end.

_I never start out pretending, but that’s because the beginning is so easy. Once everything starts to slow down you have to go back to reality._

They can’t marry. Taemin couldn’t give him children, even adopting would be difficult, and raising them together here, impossible. Jonghyun’s name would die and his mom’s heart might break, and when Taemin was old and ugly, how could he still be enough for him? And what if he and Jonghyun gave it a try and broke up? Taemin wouldn’t be able to work together anymore, watching Jonghyun until he moved on and found what he needed with someone else, and it’d kill him if Jonghyun still could.

And that’s just him. He has nothing else he can do, but Jonghyun has producing and songwriting, and he’s not like Taemin, his solo career will survive him getting too old to be an idol. Kibum has variety and fashion, Minho has his movie career, and Jinki has the quiet life he’s always wanted.

Taemin forgets to turn his phone off again, but it doesn’t remind him until he’s in bed, almost buzzing off his bedside table. He just barely catches it with shaky hands, stomach twisting, heart thundering. It won’t be from Jonghyun. Jongin, probably. He’s sent Taemin five messages since getting back, and Taemin hasn’t replied to one.

But it’s Jonghyun again. Jonghyun, Jonghyun, Jonghyun.

_our house is in boxes_

_mom is almost packed up_

_really, i should be the one to move_

_i wanted to buy them a house when they married but noona said thatd mess with maehyungs pride_

Should Taemin reply to him? Is that all it would take, is it that easy to go back to normal? Maybe for Jonghyun. If he even starts to type, Jonghyun will know, but instead he lies here frozen for so long that his phone dims. But then, before it can fall asleep—

_i told her i broke up with bora-ssi_

Taemin rolls over and closes his eyes so tight it almost hurts, waiting for this strange halfway expression to fade from his face, for his pulse to stop racing and catch up to reality, for his stomach to uncurl. Instead his phone goes again. It’s so bright it almost blinds him, but that’s not why he reads it four times.

_i thought of you all day._

Or why he falls asleep with his fingers curled around his phone, and it wakes him up hours later, buzzing in his hand. Not a text, a call. Which means it’s important, probably. He presses it to his ear with his eyes still gummed up with sleep, mumbling, “I’m up,” before his heart kicks with fear, waiting for the answer.

“If you didn’t pick up this time I was going to let you sleep.” Manager hyung. Okay. Taemin can breathe again. Or not. “Creative pushed the meeting back until tomorrow. Do you still want to come in?”

Taemin pushes himself upright and rubs his eyes open. “Take the day off, hyung.”

Manager hyung sees right through him. “You sure you want to walk? It’s cold out.”

“It’s not far,” Taemin says. “I need fresh air, anyway.”

He’d have to live a lot further from SM for it to freeze the anger frustration bubbling under his skin, but the walk does wake him up, and maybe that’s enough, since he’s not dealing with Creative today. At least not the front-facing staff. Before he went to Japan, they told him it would be too much for him to come down here himself, that they would go through the vaults themselves and narrow his options down, but for all their bullshit, no one stops him from walking right in. The people who look up from their computers scramble into half-bows at the sight of him, all but the noona in the corner. All she has to say to him is, “Shouldn’t you be in a meeting?”

“They canceled on me.”

She frowns when he drops down into the seat beside her, narrowing her eyes at him over her glasses. “You’re going to get me in trouble.”

“You’ve been here longer than she has.” Way longer. She bookmarked Danger for Taemin a year before SM green lit his debut, and he can still remember her from the first time Shinee was allowed to sit in on the song selection process. She doesn’t look impressed at all, though. He has to do better than that. “If you get fired I’ll take responsibility.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” she retorts, biting back a smile. “What would I want with a baby like you?”

“Noona~”

“Aegyo,” she says mercilessly. “Three sets. Strong.”

If that’s what it takes.

The headphones shut the rest of the world out, and once the music plays, it should be so easy for Taemin to forget everything else, even his phone buzzing in his pocket. The A & R noona plays him track after track after track. Experimental, public friendly, trendy, retro, songs that would have to be rearranged for him to dance to, songs where the beat is so hard he can barely sit still as he listens. Some of them have been earmarked for other artists. A lot of them. He could pull seniority, steal any one he likes for himself, but nothing he hears is worth it, and he still remembers how much he hated sunbaes like that as a rookie. So instead he sits there with his stomach sinking and his brain working overtime, cutting every lifeline she throws him, finding every little thing wrong like it’s his job. Which it is. He was so sure this was a good idea. He was so sure he’d get somewhere.

He was so sure Creative was the problem, not him.

When the noona heads off to lunch finally, she leaves him alone at her desk. Then he lets himself check.

Nothing from Jonghyun. Jongin.

_did u lose ur phone_

Taemin hesitates, then answers with another question.

_lunch?_

“How was Japan?”

Jongin shoots Taemin a look from over his menu. “Didn’t you read my texts? I sent you pictures, too.”

After days of silence from Taemin, it only took Jongin twenty minutes to respond to him, and then all he said was, _u pick._ That was the easy part. It’s only two blocks from SM, and they’ve been coming here for probably ten years, long enough for the owner to know their faces and the wait staff to give them their favorite table every time, in front of the tallest window into the street. In the spring, they crack it open and let the breeze in, and whenever they come for dinner, the city lights up as they eat. Today sunlight is streaming in on them, pale and wintry. The menu changes every season, which is the only reason why either of them have any excuse to hide behind it.

“It’s fine if you have nothing else to say,” Taemin says in the stupidest voice he can muster. “I’m not gonna make you talk about it.”

Jongin’s shoulders relax the way they were supposed to, but still, he takes his time answering. “It snowed every day we were there. It’s not like it is here, it was really fluffy, and there was so much of it that it stayed white for longer.”

“Sounds nice.”

Manager hyung told Taemin on the way to work this morning that it’s supposed to snow tonight, but there isn’t a single cloud in the sky.

“It was, it was really nice. It felt like walking through a postcard.” Jongin pauses, eyes settling on Taemin’s face. Taemin keeps his on his menu, reading about sweet potato puree for the hundredth time as he waits for Jongin to ask first. “What about you, what did you do?”

_I went to Japan with Jonghyun hyung instead of his girlfriend. We fucked and now I don’t know what I’m supposed to do._

“Nothing.”

The lie is out of his mouth before he can stop himself, and then there’s nothing left but to live with it, buzzing in his skin, twisting his stomach. From the time he was fifteen years old, Taemin has only had one secret from Jongin. At first it was because he didn’t realize himself, and then for a long time after that it was because there was no point in telling. Even when Jonghyun stopped seeing Taemin as a child, even when his eyes started to linger on Taemin and the things he said got harder and harder to explain, even _now_ …Jonghyun will never be his.

“Did you try that restaurant?” Jongin says back on planet earth. Which one? “The one Yena recommended.”

Oh. Yeah. Lying about that too would make him a shittier friend than not going does, though. Taemin snaps his menu shut, laying it on the table and sitting back, trying to school his expression into something close to normal. “I’m on a diet, remember?”

“Is that why you picked this place?” On another day, Jongin would have reached across the table and ruffled Taemin’s hair, but his hand stays right where it is, toying with his napkin. “Get everything you want, Taemin-ah. I’m buying.”

“To pay me back?” For the reservations. Taemin forgot to even try and cancel them. Shit. “You don’t have to, it wasn’t that much money.”

Jongin opens his mouth to reply, when the waiter returns to take their orders. Taemin’s brain is as empty as his stomach, a big echoing blank where things yummier than sweet potatoes should be, but whatever. They’re good for him. Once they’re alone again, Taemin turns back to find Jongin studying him with narrowed eyes. 

“Usually if I said that, you’d order the entire menu.”

“I’m not mad,” is the only thing left that Taemin knows to say. “Really.”

Even before, that wasn’t the right word. Bitter, disappointed, sad, scared, all those would fit better. And now…

Jongin’s expression doesn’t change. “And you really did nothing all weekend? Not even work?”

“I saw Jonghyunnie hyung,” Taemin blurts out. It’s so hard to sit there like a normal person with his ears going hot, twisting his hands uselessly in his lap and nailing himself to his seat when every muscle in his body is screaming at him to go hide in the bathroom.

All that, and all Jongin says is, “How was he?”

“Fine.”

Taemin reaches for his water glass. He only means to take a sip and ends up swallowing an ice cube as Jongin presses him, “Just acting like it, or really fine?” Jongin knows Jonghyun too well, but Taemin knows him better than anyone. Jonghyun stopped trying to fake it in front of him a long time ago. Before he can tell Jongin that, though, Jongin tells him almost cautiously, “Junmyeon hyung said he broke up with his girlfriend.”

Taemin sets his glass down with a thunk, back to not knowing what to do with his hands. The bigger problem is his heart.

“Mm.”

“He said that he was thinking of marrying her.”

“He told me he didn’t love her.” And Taemin knew better than to believe him, so what is he doing repeating it? He’s so dumb. His stomach twists up so tight he feels sick, this bitter metallic taste in his mouth. Taemin swallows it back. “Hyung can’t be alone, so he ends up dating just to date a lot. He never thinks of it like that until it’s over.”

“Has he been drinking?” Jongin asks.

“Once with me. He barely got drunk.”

Jongin nods, but still, he hesitates, almost like he’s scared to say whatever’s on his mind. If it’s anything close to _You wouldn’t understand, Taeminnie, you’ve never had your heart broken,_ it’s the last thing on earth Taemin needs to hear, but their waiter saves him in the end. Taemin picks up his spoon with clumsy fingers and digs in. The silence between them stretches weirdly, sound of cutlery so sharp in Taemin’s ears, conversation swelling around them. 

Finally Jongin looks up from cutting his steak. “What about the other hyungs, how are they? Besides busy. I only ever see them on TV anymore.”

For a long time there was no such thing as besides busy, and there still isn’t for Taemin. Jongin isn’t asking about the scripts Minho’s been reading, though, or the stage wear Kibum designed for NCT Z, or that time Jinki guested on a traveling program and the crew accidentally left him behind. He’s asking about the only thing people in relationships ever ask about.

“Kibum hyung and his boyfriend are a weekend couple, he says that’s how they’ve lasted so long, and Minho hyung is still with Eunbin noona. They’ll probably get engaged soon.”

Jongin smiles. “I always thought Jinki hyung would get married first.”

Taemin’s always been scared Jonghyun would, which is another one of those things he’ll never say out loud, not even to Jongin. “They were thinking about it but ended up breaking up. It doesn’t seem like he’s unhappy, though. He goes fishing a lot.” Before Jongin can ask anything else or bring up Jonghyun and Bora again, Taemin has to change the subject. “What about your members?”

“I told you we’re releasing a winter album, right?”

Nope, but Taemin heard about it anyway. It’s hard to miss things when he spends every single day at the company. He barely has to try to bring a smile to his face. “Good for you, you got something past Creative.”

“We’re not getting any promotions,” Jongin says, like that’s news. “They’re all too busy, anyway. It’s too hard to get us all in the studio at the same time, we just go in to record on our own.”

“Sounds weird.” Taemin digs his spoon into his puree, not sure if he should be asking. “What about your solo?”

It would only be Jongin’s third. SM made promises they didn’t keep for all the years leading up to Jongin’s enlistment, then dropped his debut album while Jongin was on the bus to basic training. The wait to use his phone lasted ten million years for Taemin that day, and then Jongin had to wait another two weeks before he could get his back, and call and ask what Taemin thought.

"If you can’t get them to move, how am I supposed to?” Jongin says now, voice even. “You don’t have to make that face, Taeminnie. Honestly, I haven’t pushed at all. It’s nice having a life again.” Music is Taemin’s life. It used to be Jongin’s, too, but all this time, he’s been changing, and Taemin has stayed in place. Jongin sets his knife down, forking a piece of steak onto Taemin’s plate. “Anyway, what about you?”

“What about me? You see me all the time,” Taemin says automatically, before his own words catch up to him and his stomach drops. That used to mean every day. Now…every other week?

Jongin’s not talking about that, anyway. “It’s been two years. I don’t even know whether to count the last guy.”

Taemin almost chokes on the bite of steak Jongin gave him, but when he can breathe again, somehow the first thing out of his mouth is, “You sound like Jonghyun hyung,” and then, stumbling over the words, “Just worry about yourself, Jongin-ah.” Taemin is being so weird. Jongin has no way of knowing Taemin was ever in Japan or that Jonghyun ever even looked at him, he’s talking about Jungho. Taemin slides his hand across the table to touch Jongin’s wrist. “Or don’t. It keeps coming out wrong somehow, but I’m glad you had a good time. And I’m happy for you that things are working out.”

Jongin breaks into this weird half-smile, almost like he’s fighting it down. “Your problem is you only meet new people through work,” and then, at Taemin’s look, “Yena doesn’t count, we met at a coffee shop.”

And then walked back to work together. Jongin thought she would say goodbye before they reached SM, not knowing they worked in the same building. He was waiting for Taemin that day, too. If Taemin hadn’t run late, maybe Jongin would be as alone as him, but then, neither of them would be. It’s useless to think about, though, if it hadn’t been Yena it would’ve been someone else, sometime. Maybe the only difference is that for Taemin, it’s always been the same person.

“Should I try clubbing~? That’s how Kibum hyung met his boyfriend,” he says, sick to death of talking about this all of the sudden. He should have changed the subject.

Jongin hesitates in replying, for so long it starts to eat at Taemin’s nerves. There’s nothing to do but wait him out, stuffing his face, spoon on automatic, anything to fill the emptiness inside him.

Finally Jongin says, “Yena has a college friend who likes you. He had a poster of you from ‘Move’ on his dorm room wall, that’s what got them talking. He still goes to all your concerts.”

Taemin’s stomach opens up.

“I don’t mind meeting him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Not as a fan, Taemin-ah.” Jongin leans in, trying to catch Taemin’s eye. “As a man.”

There’s no such thing as other men to Taemin, not anymore. It was bad enough before Jonghyun fucked him, all those years closing his eyes and trying not to imagine him. Why is he doing this to Taemin now? He’s had this same conversation with so many different people over the years, his mom trying to set him up with girls, manager hyung asking him if he’d like him to get guys’ numbers, Amber and Soojung pointing out cute boys, all the hyungs finding him dates, all except Jonghyun. And now Jongin, too.

“Younger guys all look like babies to me,” Taemin tries. It worked for the A & R noona this morning, but not now.

“I’ve met him before, he’s nice. He’s taller than me. Not as good-looking, but not bad. Honestly, even ugly guys can be sexy if they’re smart. He’s an engineer.”

“I’m not going to start dating my fans,” Taemin says. “Besides, you know better than anyone I’m not how I look. He’d just end up disappointed.”

“You don’t even know what he likes about you,” Jongin retorts.

“He doesn’t like me, he likes Shinee’s Taemin. Even seeing me without makeup would be bad enough.”

“You have to give people a chance, Taemin-ah. That’s the most basic of the basics,” Jongin tells him, so gently Taemin flashes red.

His own voice comes out sharp enough to cut glass. “Why are you giving me dating advice?” The better question is, why is Taemin so mad? Why does he suck so much today? He swallows hard, trying to find it in himself to raise his eyes from his food and look Jongin in the face again. Sorry would be way overboard, but playing it off like a joke is worse. “You used to be as bad as me.”

Way worse. It’s not funny, especially when Jongin’s silverware clunks down on the table and his chair creaks as he leans in to catch Taemin’s eye. All Taemin wants to do is hide, but that’s dumb, he’s being so dumb. He lifts his head again and lets Jongin tell him, “It’s just been a really long time for you.”

_It’s been twenty years, Jongin-ah. I’m never going to change, and it’s never going to work out, especially not now. I know I can’t have him, but that just makes me want him more. I miss him every second he’s not there, but I’m scared of what I’ll do if I see him. What he will. It was better when it was only me. I could have lasted my whole life like that._

“I’m fine,” Taemin says.

Jongin opens his mouth to reply…and then doesn’t. He asks about work instead, and they find things to talk about until Jongin has paid and they’ve stepped outside, and the only thing left is goodbye. Then Jongin remembers.

“We got you this in Japan,” he says, digging something small out of his pocket and pressing it into Taemin’s hand. “It’s nothing much, but you already have everything you want, so don’t get disappointed.”

A snow globe keychain. When Taemin holds it up, he sets off a flurry of fake sparkly snow, glittering in the sunlight. It looks nothing like the Hokkaido Jongin described, but what would he know?

Nothing, clearly. Once Jongin finds out he walked, he offers to give him a ride. Taemin’s house is maybe a mile or two from here, but SM is only two blocks, so he says no and goes back there. He doesn’t think he can stand another afternoon down in the A & R room, so he heads up to the practice rooms instead, the place where he’s spent most of his life, good times, shitty times, times where he didn’t know how to feel or what to do. It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t had new material in years and he has nothing to practice for. All he ever needs is music.

Except today…It’s been too long since the last time. His body resists him as he stretches and he can’t pick a song, and when he left his phone in his locker with his clothes, he must have left his brain as well. Every mistake he makes jumps out at him in the mirror, but he can’t stop making them, and he stays in his body the whole time as he gets gross and sweaty and weak, shirt sticking to his back, hair hanging in his eyes and clinging to his neck, legs cramping up, heart beating like a drum. And then he sees him in the mirror and it stops.

“Hyung?” Taemin whirls around, music forgotten, and finds Jonghyun standing behind him. Did he die of a heart attack just now? Or maybe fall and hit his head, but this isn’t a dream, or else Jonghyun’s hand wouldn’t feel so big and warm and solid on Taemin’s shoulder, righting his balance. It’s been half a week. It’s been an eternity. All Taemin knows to say is, “What are you doing here?”

“Did you lose your phone again?” Jonghyun says, slipping his hand up to pinch Taemin’s cheek, and just like that, it’s like it’s been no time at all. His crinkly-eyed smile hurts Taemin’s heart and his touch feels like the sun hitting Taemin’s face, and Taemin has to remember how to breathe, looking at him from this close up, but those are all things Jonghyun did to him before he ever kissed and fucked him and came inside him, or texted him things he’d send to his girlfriend. And it’s so normal when he says, “My mom went out with her friends so I thought I’d eat with you. It took me way longer than it should have to find you.”

“You checked with Creative first?”

“They said you probably hadn’t come in. How is it possible they don’t know you at all?” Jonghyun says. It almost sounds like an accusation, as though Jonghyun isn’t just as bad as Taemin when he’s working.

“I went past them and hung out with the A & R noona today,” Taemin confesses. “They’re going to hate me when they find out~. It wasn’t even worth it, I didn’t even get anywhere.”

Talking never works for Taemin, but somehow just saying it out loud has his chest clearing out. He half expects Jonghyun’s hand on his back, guiding him towards the door, Jonghyun asking him what kind of junk food he’s supposed to buy him, telling Taemin he doesn’t need to change, he’s not taking him anywhere expensive, but when Jonghyun tells him, “I don’t mind hanging around if you have more steam to blow off, but there are other things that work for that, too,” his last thought is food. His first is Jonghyun’s tongue and his teeth, his hands and mouth on Taemin, bringing him so close to release, Jonghyun pounding into him, _You needed my dick. You need me._ But they’re back to reality, and Jonghyun says what he’s supposed to. “Come on. Hyung will buy you whatever you want~”

Taemin should, too, but the closest he can get to it is, “I can’t eat that much. I had lunch with Jonginnie.”

Jonghyun’s expression twists ever-so-slightly. “Is it because you’re not hungry or because of your diet?”

Because Taemin is going to sit there the whole time scared that it’s a date, more scared that it’s not, but he isn’t hungry for once, and he shouldn’t be.

“You think I started too far out, right?” he says. “I just want to lose some weight now so it’s easier when I get closer.”

If Taemin ever does. Today might end up costing him more time than it would have if he’d just hung up on Manager hyung and rolled over and slept instead. Jonghyun watches as he picks his jacket up off the floor and goes through his locker for his phone, then waits outside the bathroom while he changes and splashes water on his face. There’s no point trying to make himself pretty beyond that. His hair is lank and damp with sweat, and when he reaches up to rearrange his bangs they just fall back into his face.

“Honestly, it scares me when you say stuff like that. You’re so skinny already,” Jonghyun tells him as soon as he emerges, the way he always does, except this time it’s so long past the point where it’d be normal to reply. His hand comes up on instinct to herd Taemin towards the stairs, firm on the small of his back.

“I’m not the fattest I’ve ever been,” is all Taemin is going to admit. “That was when you were all in the military.”

Jonghyun’s hand slides down to his ass. This is normal, this is fine, it doesn’t even matter if anyone sees, Jonghyun has been touching and pinching and patting and slapping it for ten years, and Taemin has been letting him do it. He keeps walking somehow, even with his muscles melting on him and Jonghyun’s palm burning through his pants to his skin, one finger hooked into his belt loop.

“I don’t know if I ever told you, but there was another Taemin fanboy in my unit,” Jonghyun says. “I offered to introduce you so many times, but he was too scared to meet to you. Whenever you came to visit me he’d die of jealousy. Some of the other guys did, too~”

Not in the way Jonghyun probably wants him to think, but that doesn’t stop Taemin’s head from taking him straight back to lunch.

_I don’t mind meeting him, if that’s what you’re asking._

_Not as a fan, Taemin-ah. As a man._

“They were just being nice to you because you didn’t have a girlfriend,” Taemin says, dying a little inside as he steps away from Jonghyun, letting his hand fall back to his side.

“You should be nice to me, too,” Jonghyun replies immediately. Taemin can’t bring himself to avoid his eyes, not with Jonghyun looking at him like that. “What about coffee? And fresh air. You look like you need it. We can pick some up and take a walk by the river.”

The light is dying but it’s still safe. Taemin has no excuse to hold Jonghyun’s hand, especially not when he has his coffee to keep them warm, and for as many couples as they come across, there are also joggers and skateboarders and bikers, parents with their kids, gangs of middle school boys, ahjussis in suits de-stressing from work, people who’ve come to enjoy the thin dusting of snow on the ground. It takes a while for Jonghyun and Taemin to find an empty bench, and then they sit and drink their coffee, knees pressed together, and Taemin has to concentrate on staring out at the water instead of Jonghyun’s face. When Jonghyun lays his arm across the bench at Taemin’s back, Taemin waits and waits and waits for it to slip down around his shoulders, for Jonghyun to pull him in against his side and cross the invisible line that would make this is a date. Nothing is stopping Taemin from reaching up and taking Jonghyun’s hand, leaning into him, except Taemin himself. 

The sky fades from pink to purple to blue, first stars winking to life, moon rising, and each breath Taemin takes lasts lifetimes. Jonghyun says whatever comes to mind, gives Taemin so many tiny pieces of himself, and he doesn’t care if Taemin can’t find anything funny or interesting to say back. Finally he can’t find anything at all.

They fall into silence on the walk back to the car, and by the time Jonghyun pulls out of the parking lot, it’s grown so loud it has Taemin fumbling for the radio. When he turns it on it’s set to an American hip hop station, speakers thudding on, bass reverberating throughout the car, which is the biggest reason why Jonghyun bought it besides wanting to have sex in it. Which, Taemin is not going there. Nope. Jonghyun dials down the volume and lets him flip channels, bursts of music, blaring commercials, until finally Taemin hits something else he likes and he grabs Taemin’s hand before Taemin can skip past it, sudden, electric. Before Taemin’s brain can even catch up Jonghyun has released him, leaving him to lace his own fingers together in his lap and wring that stupid tingly feeling out. In the meantime, strings fill the car, followed by a mournful voice Taemin should probably recognize. His parents only listen to Shinee out of loyalty – the soundtrack of their lives is ballad after ballad after ballad.

“Minho recommended this one to me, it’s good for late nights,” Jonghyun says. “He claims he heard ‘Breathe’ once, but it’s mostly non-idol singers.”

No reminders after getting out of work, in other words. All the way back when Jonghyun was Jjong-D of Blue Night, he had a policy of not inviting idols on or talking about idol music. He broke his own rules for Taemin when he debuted solo, and he kept telling Taemin he was special, even after he’d invited half the company to make appearances and Taemin came back with the others as Shinee.

“Have you ever thought of going back to radio?” Taemin says.

Jonghyun glances at him, surprised. “After all these years?”

“You didn’t leave Blue Night because you disliked it.”

For the longest time, it was the one good thing Jonghyun had, while the rest of his life fell apart around it. He never slept before, but working from twelve to two every single night no matter what else was going on, there were times he stopped sleeping at all. That got better after he quit, and in time, Taemin really thought everything else had too. Maybe he just saw what he wanted to see, though, and maybe he’s doing the same thing now, staring into the half of Jonghyun’s face he can see, trying so hard to read his expression.

“That was one of the worst breakups I’ve ever had,” is all Jonghyun says.

“Minho hyung said you cried your eyes out~” When Jonghyun doesn’t smile, Taemin presses his finger into the corner of his mouth, crooking it up. He only realizes his mistake at the first touch of Jonghyun’s lips, as soft against his fingertip as they were on Taemin’s skin that night. Before he can snatch his hand away, Jonghyun nips at his finger, bright hot pinch of pain-pleasure. Taemin retreats to his side of the car, mind an echoing blank where there were words just a second ago. What was he saying? Oh. “It wouldn’t hurt to go back now, right? They said you could whenever.”

“That’s like telling me not to date,” Jonghyun says, but when he glances over he probably can’t see how Taemin’s stomach twists at the idea. Probably. “You don’t know how hard it was to find someone who was willing to share me with MBC every night.”

“All your girlfriends have been in the industry, though. Shouldn’t they have understood?”

“It gets tiring being the one who always has to understand, Taemin-ah. When their own schedules are like that, why would they want to deal with mine too?” Jonghyun should give Taemin until the next red light to figure out his own expression, stop watching him instead of the car in front of them. “What?”

“Nothing.” That’s a lie, though. Taemin is stuck putting it out there. “Have you ever felt like that with me?”

“Aigoo.” Jonghyun reaches over to pet Taemin’s hair clumsily. “When would I have had time, we always had the same schedules.”

“Not anymore,” Taemin shouldn’t have to remind him. Not for years and years, now. “Most of the time I just think of myself.”

Almost before Taemin can finish Jonghyun is correcting him, “Of your work, you mean. That’s not the same thing, Taeminnie. The fact that you think it is makes me crazy.”

“You’re the same way, though. You even said so before, you said you miss working like a crazy person.” Before, as in naked in the bath with Taemin, hours away from coming inside him. Taemin cuts his eyes to the window, ears glowing red hot. It takes him a minute to rediscover his voice. “I just meant I’ve neglected you and the other hyungs a lot.”

Even now, he’s only saying it for himself. The same as Taemin has had to live with all of Jonghyun’s messages, so normal they paralyzed him, Jonghyun has had to live with his silence. But then, that was normal too. Taemin never replies to him.

“Sometimes I want to kill you when you don’t answer your phone, or when you ignore me, or you don’t listen. Is that the kind of thing you want to hear?” Taemin catches Jonghyun’s hand in the corner of his eye, but instead of flattening himself against his door he stays still. It never hurts when Jonghyun pinches his cheek, unlike Minho, except this time it almost does, trying not to lean into Jonghyun’s touch. Even more when Jonghyun takes it away and says, “I miss you when you don’t talk to me.”

“I miss you too,” Taemin says before he can rethink it.

“Good thing there’s an easy way to solve that~” Jonghyun replies, so easily. “You don’t have to text me first, but at least text me back.”

“It goes deeper than that, hyung.”

Jonghyun nods, stealing another glance at Taemin, dark dark eyes, tiniest smile on his lips, before he goes right back to making Taemin’s heart hurt. “We’ve never said anything important over the phone.”

They’ve never said it at all.

_I love you. I wouldn’t want you this bad if I didn’t. I would never have fucked things up like this. Don’t you know that? You should. You know me._

More like he knows Taemin has never loved any of his boyfriends, and he probably knows he’s never even tried that hard. He knows he just goes by type, dates men who ask him first, lets them fuck him before he catches feelings, and then waits for them to realize he’s a shitty boyfriend and break up with him. The longest he’s lasted with anyone is a year. Jonghyun has lasted two, and to hear him tell it he’s always been the same as Taemin, except that he tries harder than anyone Taemin knows. Sex has never meant love for either of them.

“It’s not that even, I don’t care if it’s important or not,” Taemin says out loud, getting the words out before the acid in his throat can burn holes into them. This much he deserves to say. “We got stuck together every single day from the time I was thirteen, right up until you enlisted. And then after you got out I went in, and now it’s been years since Shinee came back. I don’t know how long it’s going to take before I get used to not seeing you.”

“Have you been lonely?” Jonghyun asks, so gentle it hurts even more.

Taemin lets himself admit it. “Mm.”

The bigger mistake is letting himself look, because then he’s back to staring, and he has to deal with things like Jonghyun’s hands on the steering wheel, all big and veiny, the set of his shoulders and the sprawling vee of his legs. His eyes linger one second too long, and he wants Jonghyun’s dick so bad he can taste it, and he would give anything, _anything,_ just to lean forward and bury his head in Jonghyun’s lap. Except making Jonghyun crash his car again after so many years. Taemin forces his eyes back up to Jonghyun’s face, only to catch Jonghyun looking, too. Which means Jonghyun probably caught him, which means Taemin should be gluing himself to his window until the cold cools the fire in his ears and cheeks, not sitting here and letting Jonghyun see that too.

“I always thought you’d be fine with just your friends. They’ve always been so important to you,” is all Jonghyun says in the end. He pauses, then goes on almost carefully, “When did Jonginnie get back from Japan?”

“A couple days after we did,” Taemin says automatically, before his own words bring him up short again, send him straight back to that morning. Waking up naked in Jonghyun’s arms.

He didn’t take Jonghyun back there with him, though, because somehow Jonghyun can still care about things like, “Did he bring anything back for you? I forgot him when we went shopping for the members.”

“There was nothing to forget, we’d never done that kind of thing before.” Taemin digs in his pocket and dangles the keychain Jongin gave him between two fingers so that Jonghyun can see it, snow swirling down, flashing neon in the city lights. “It was Yena-ssi’s idea, it’s not something he’d pick.”

“Taeminnie—”

“Don’t tell me I’m jealous again,” Taemin says over him, stuffing it back in his pocket. “Really, I’m not. I just thought it was weird.”

Jonghyun shakes his head at him. For one long moment he hesitates, and Taemin is left bracing himself for more things like, _Not all change is bad, Taeminnie,_ or even _That’s proof she doesn’t hate you, Taemin-ah. I told you that’s impossible._ But then Jonghyun just says, “Normal things have always been weird for you two.” He clears his throat, flexing his fingers on the wheel, maybe waiting for Taemin to answer. Before he can, though, Jonghyun asks, “Which way am I turning here? I forget.”

He hasn’t driven Taemin home in months. The last time was after Shinee got together for dinner, and Taemin was too drunk to remember it. He woke up naked to a clean apartment, a can of Dawn 808 on his bedside table, hangover stew on his stove, and a note from Jonghyun that said, _The pictures turned out nice~._ Once he found his phone days later, there were three texts waiting for him, _didnt mean nudes_ and _u know i wouldnt do that to u rt? im sorry if i made u think that,_ followed by a photo of Taemin from that night, smiling dopily, almost poking his eye out with a vee sign.

There’s nothing to help him forget tonight, least of all the fact that nothing has even happened. They just sat in the car and talked and Seoul flew by, and somehow Jonghyun looks even more beautiful under the streetlights outside Taemin’s building.

It’s so much harder than it should be to force himself to say, “You can just drop me off out front, the parking garage is really annoying to get in and out.”

Jonghyun is no help. “I don’t mind, Taeminnie. I’d rather watch you go up. You never text me once you get inside, and then I’d waste the whole night worrying over nothing and getting mad at myself for it.”

“Being stupid, you mean.”

Jonghyun was supposed to laugh, but Taemin’s only reward is a smile, this slow, slow curve of his mouth that sends heat curling through Taemin. Jonghyun takes the speed bump into the garage so gently when all Taemin needs is to be jolted to his senses, something that will make him stop staring like this. If Jonghyun feels his eyes on him he doesn’t say anything, just asks Taemin where he should park and then doesn’t ask again when Taemin tells him which floor his spot is on instead of pointing out he can take the elevator from the first level. By the time they reach the third Taemin’s heart is beating like a bird trapped in his chest, and when Jonghyun pulls up next to Taemin’s car and cuts the engine and the dashboard lights die, it’s like Taemin can’t even breathe. Getting his seatbelt doesn’t help, but getting the door should. If he could make himself move. He’s being so dumb, there’s no way Jonghyun feels it too, it’s been a long day and this is the least sexy place in all of Seoul, dark and cold and lonely, and Jonghyun only brought him down here so that he could forget about him for the rest of the night, and.

“Have you decided if you’re inviting me up?” Jonghyun says.

“What?”

Jonghyun smiles that smile again. Does those things to Taemin, again. “You looked like you spent the whole drive thinking about it.”

His seatbelt clinks against the window as he undoes it, fabric whirring across Jonghyun’s clothes, seat creaking as he turns to Taemin, and there’s no reason for those kinds of sounds to be doing these things to Taemin. There’s no reason for him to be having a heart attack from breathing Jonghyun’s air, staring into his face from this close, not after surviving for his whole life, no reason for his whole body to go hot when Jonghyun’s eyes drop to his lips, why one look could make his legs go weak after the things Taemin has done with his mouth.

No reason why it takes every single thing he has just to state the obvious. “This is a really bad idea, hyung.”

“I know,” Jonghyun murmurs, so close Taemin can feel each word brush his lips, and then he’s leaned in and their mouths are pressed together and this is a kiss. Sweet and lingering, Jonghyun’s lips so full and soft, moving against his. Taemin has had Jonghyun’s mouth all over his body, his tongue wrapped around his dick, his teeth sinking into Taemin’s skin as he came inside him, but somehow this feels like the first time all over again, shaky, world-shattering, breathless, and his eyes have barely slid shut when Jonghyun pulls away. Opening them again is worse. It’s good he already knows what he has to say, because he won’t find those words anywhere in Jonghyun’s face, his hair falling across his forehead, the tip of his nose, the faint stubble over his lips. His lips. Fuck.

“We can’t,” Taemin says.

Taemin almost feels it when Jonghyun smiles, breath puffing against Taemin’s lips, but when he leans in again Taemin stops him with a hand to his chest. He can’t stop his fingers from curling into the fabric of Jonghyun’s jacket, holding onto him for dear life while Jonghyun’s eyes take him apart.

“We already did,” Jonghyun reminds him needlessly. “Do you want to pretend it didn’t happen? Or forget that it did?”

How could Taemin? That’s so far from being the point it makes him dizzy, or maybe that’s the scent of Jonghyun’s skin. He’s worn the same aftershave for like ten years at this point, this is so unfair.

Anyway. The point. The thing Taemin would rather die than say, but he has to. “We can’t just do whatever we want. You’ve already thought it through by now, if I did there’s no way you haven’t. Shinee, your career, mine—”

If Jonghyun wanted to interrupt him all he had to do was nudge his nose against Taemin’s and reach up to cup his cheek, palm all rough and warm, thumb pressing into the corner of his mouth, pushing inside with each word Taemin gets out. But then on top of that he says, “Overthinking is also a thing. You’ve jumped from sex complicating things to it ruining them.”

Complicating them _is_ ruining them. Jonghyun is the one single person outside Taemin’s family that Taemin couldn’t survive without. Even with the others, even with Jongin, it’s different. And Taemin’s family...

“What if our parents found out?” Taemin says.

“Yours still haven’t come around?”

Jonghyun falters almost as soon as he’s said it, reaching up to stroke Taemin’s hair back, which means Taemin has to beat him to it, give him an answer before he buries Taemin in apologies or kisses.

It barely hurts to say it after all these years, anyway. “More like they still think I will? Hyung already gave them grandchildren, but they haven’t given up on me yet.” The first and only time Taemin mentioned adoption, his mom said, _Do you think your father could have raised you alone, Taemin-ah?_ Since then…he’s not ready yet. He still has his career to think of. He has no time to date, he hasn’t met anyone in two years, man or woman. “Anyway, I’m more worried about you.”

“My mom wants me to be happy, Taeminnie,” Jonghyun tells him immediately, tucking a strand of hair behind Taemin’s ear, fingertips whispering over the furl of it, already burning hot. “That’s all.”

Jonghyun leans in again, another kiss that’s over almost as soon as it begins and leaves Taemin in ruins. He keeps his eyes open somehow. Keeps talking when all he wants to do is stick his tongue in Jonghyun’s mouth.

“My parents do too, they just see happiness differently.” When Taemin tries to retreat back to his side of the car, Jonghyun’s hand is there to stop him, cradling the back of his head with his fingers threaded through Taemin’s hair. Taemin wishes he would pull, yank his head back and bare his neck for his teeth and tongue or drag it down into his lap, anything but sit there and stare, watch Taemin’s lips as they form the words. “She thought you were getting married, hyung. You’re almost forty. She wouldn’t want you to fuck around, especially not with me.”

Jonghyun’s features darken, just that little bit, and he barely lets Taemin finish before he’s ignoring the important parts of what Taemin just said and insisting, “She likes you. You’ve always been her favorite.”

“That’s why.” Taemin reaches up between them, smoothing the crease between Jonghyun’s brows with his thumb. “I don’t want to lose you, either.”

“You’re that scared things won’t work out?”

Taemin’s too scared to ask what ‘things’ even are. “There’s no going back, hyung. That should scare you, too.”

For one long endless moment, Jonghyun just looks at him. Then, in this voice that wraps so tight around Taemin’s heart, “I’m not going anywhere, Taeminnie. I’m yours whether you take me or not.” He runs his knuckle down Taemin’s nose and lifts away finally. Taemin would barely have to reach to touch him again, but he’s good and folds his hands in his lap. Jonghyun smiles faintly. “What are you going to do for the rest of the night?”

“Go to bed.”

“Not to sleep, though.”

“Hyung~”

Jonghyun smiles like he can’t help himself. “I’d tell you to think of me, but that thing is way too big.”

“I have others.”

And Taemin said that out loud. Yeah. Time to go. Two kisses aren’t enough to keep him here, it’s not like Jonghyun fucked his mouth with his tongue or anything. His legs should still work. His door handle is right there.

And then there’s Jonghyun’s voice again, low and amused. “I don’t mind, Taeminnie. There are things I can do that it can’t.”

Taemin’s whole body goes hot, and for one second it’s like he can feel Jonghyun’s dick inside him again, splitting him open, filling him up so full he can taste it in the back of his throat. All he has to say is, _There’s nothing for either of us to mind, hyung. If I wasn’t allowed to mind if you fucked Bora-ssi every night for the rest of your life, you’re not allowed to mind if I fuck myself,_ but that’s not it anyway, that’s so far from right, and what comes out of his mouth is, “It can’t do anything, it’s a dildo.”

“That you can’t do to yourself.” For one second, Jonghyun struggles with himself, lip caught between his teeth, but he always loses. Always. Taemin can feel his whole body tightening around his words before he even says them. “I keep thinking about putting it in you.”

Now Taemin will think about it too. Not in this moment, later, because there’s going to have to be a later, pants yanked down around his ass, hips snapping back against his own fingers, wishing they were stronger and thicker, teasing himself until he’s frantic, but even then, it will still feel too big, and it’ll stay inside him, stupid and plastic and waiting for him to do everything. He really was going to bed to sleep. Really. Why didn’t he just say that?

“I wouldn’t need it if you were there, hyung,” he says instead.

That only takes another second to hit Jonghyun, and then his eyes go so dark there’s no air left in here to breathe, and next thing Jonghyun’s lips are crushed against his, slow and hot and wet, and his hands are tangled in Jonghyun’s hair and Jonghyun’s are everywhere, down his spine, up his shirt, spread over his skin. Jonghyun’s teeth barely sink into Taemin’s bottom lip before he’s opening his mouth for him, filthy wide, but he should’ve known Jonghyun would tease him, touching his tongue to his, sliding them together, everything but fucking in as deep as he can go. Taemin tries closing his lips around it, sucking on it, wet and sloppy, and he thinks he’s moaning, he thinks that’s him, those broken, desperate sounds Jonghyun should be swallowing. Instead he draws away, letting Taemin catch his bottom lip between his teeth, telling him things like, “You like it rougher than you have strength for. Hmm? You probably get impatient, too, and you hate doing all the work.” Yes yes yes, which is why Jonghyun needs to get back here, kiss him again, kiss him and kiss him and kiss him until Taemin is begging for his dick, not slip his hand up between them and push his thumb against Taemin’s lips. Taemin takes it into his mouth, eyes fixed on Jonghyun’s face, pushing his tongue against the pad, closing his lips around it, sucking on it. Jonghyun’s breathing hisses, but somehow he still finds the voice to say, “How do you get it wet?”

Does he think Taemin can fit that thing in his mouth? Maybe. Barely. If Jonghyun were watching, yes. Anything. The same way he’d get Jonghyun wet now, messy slutty kisses all over his dick, the head and the underside and Jonghyun’s balls, tracing the vein with his tongue, licking it until every inch was slick with his spit, just drooling over it, until finally Jonghyun pushed Taemin’s head down and made him take it and told Taemin, _You’re so wet for me, baby._ Then he could tell Taemin how bad he was when he resisted as Jonghyun pulled him off, tell him every other dirty shouldn’t-be-hot thing he would undoubtedly come up with, as long as he didn’t tell Taemin they needed real lube and let Taemin sit on his dick next. Take him inch by inch, raw and thick and hot, whole body burning at the stretch, so big-feeling it would split Taemin in half if he moved. Except he would. Except how is he even thinking about all this now, how is there anything left in his head except Jonghyun’s mouth on his again, his hand holding his face, his skin spread beneath Taemin’s fingers when he sneaks his hand under his collar, warm and firm and smooth, fabric of Jonghyun’s shirt stretched to breaking across his wrist. Jonghyun pulls away finally to gasp for air, holding Taemin one breath away with one hand while he takes him apart with the other, fingers tracing up and down his spine, toying with his waistband.

“Invite me up,” Jonghyun murmurs into his mouth.

His hand slips into Taemin’s pants, big enough that it pulls the waistband taut across Taemin’s stomach, and then his fingers hook in his briefs, burning into his hip. If Taemin did what he’s told, took him up with him and never let go, Jonghyun would put bruises there. His dick is already hard, tenting in his pants, big and thick and hot. Taemin could jerk him off right here, fumble with his belt, stick his hand in his pants, kiss down his neck and listen to his gasps and moans, but if he waited, if he was good, Jonghyun would fuck Taemin wherever he wanted, as hard as he wanted, as long as he wanted, and in the end, they’d fall asleep in each other’s arms again. And when Taemin woke up, it’d be to his alarm. If he didn’t let Jonghyun sleep he’d feel bad, and if Jonghyun washed his hair in the shower again or made him breakfast he’d probably feel worse, and they’d say goodbye at the elevators. And the next time they saw each other, everything would be a little more wrong, and then a little more, until finally Jonghyun realized that Taemin was ruining his life.

Taemin’s dick is throbbing and his chest is crushing in on itself and if he doesn’t say this now, he’ll have forever to hate himself. “Good night, hyung.”

He leans in for one last kiss before he can second-guess himself, as soft and sweet as before, before he wrenches his door open and gets his legs under him. They turn to jello as he walks, Jonghyun’s eyes following him with every step he takes, until finally the elevator doors close him in. Then he’s back to being alone, dick still so hard it almost hurts, straining in his pants. He hides it behind his coat until he has his own door locked behind him, and when he takes himself in his hand and closes his eyes, Jonghyun is there again.

So is the creative director, when he walks into the next meeting. Taemin freezes at the sight of her, but the door clicking shut behind him jolts his muscles back into place, and he moves to take the seat across from her.

“You look surprised to see me,” she says.

Her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes, but it never does. She spent the first few years after she took over trying to fill the giant shoes the last director had left behind her, before she made Creative hers. Staff changed over, priorities shifted, and the big picture got redrawn. A lot of that came down to time, but a lot of it was her, too.

And now she’s waiting for a reply. “It’s been a long time.”

Her smile widens. “I got out of another meeting early enough to sit in on this one. Lucky me~”

The staff laughs around them, and the assistant director hastens to say, “We told him you were busy with the NBG.”

“How’s that going?” Taemin asks, even though he already knows the answer: not well. The weeks he spent practicing “Replay” with the hyungs were one long endless, sleepless blur, but if it was bad for him, he was barely aware of half of it. His entire world was narrowed down to the practice room, while the adults around him figured the hard things out. What he should say, how he should act, what parts of him and the others they should try to sell.

“Debuts are tricky,” Director-nim says. “Building a fandom is always the hardest part. Keeping them isn’t always the easiest thing, but that’s more about keeping your image and managing the fans’ expectations.” She pauses, staring into Taemin’s face while she weighs her words. “When I took this job I didn’t consider how difficult it could be to manage yours.”

Here it is. Taemin figured as soon as he saw her. No, before that. As soon as he sat down with the A & R noona. He should’ve gone back that afternoon and not left until he found something to bring to the table today. Jonghyun would still have found him down there, but maybe Taemin would have had the strength to say no to him. 

Probably not. He doesn’t even have the strength now to wish that’s how things had happened, and he wouldn’t trade Jonghyun’s kisses for something better to say than, “You mean the artist’s.”

“And not you personally, of course,” Director-nim says, mouth curling with the barest hint of irony. “It’s rare in this industry for careers to last so long. None of the companies I worked for previously had the same legacy as SM. A lot of times idols were pushed out the door before their contracts got too favorable, and I worked with a lot of girls who got starved out until theirs were up.” _Be grateful for what you have,_ in other words. _Stop pushing it._ She sits back, folding her arms over her chest. “Luckily, that kind of thing doesn’t fall under my purview, either.”

 _Or you’d be out._ Taemin is so tired of these people talking in code. He never knows if he’s crazy or they are.

“They told you I looked through the vaults, right?”

If that’s not the point of all this, she can just tell him that. Which she doesn’t. “Did you think it wouldn’t come up? We all work together, Taemin-ssi.”

And just like that, his frustration rises up in him like a wall. Instead of figuring out how to climb over it and get around it, waiting for it to go back down, he lets himself say, “Then let me work with you, too.”

_Let me work, please. I’m going crazy._

“We set these meetings for a reason, Taemin-ssi,” the assistant director cuts in, almost gently, but this one just started and Taemin is already so far past caring. Nothing is going to get done today. He woke up alone knowing that, went to the gym knowing that, and came all the way up here knowing that. He’s lived with it for months.

“Honestly, it’s probably my fault that I’ve never learned how to talk to you guys,” comes out of his mouth. “You know a million different words that all mean no, but I only know one. It’d be so much easier for me if you’d just say it.”

Director-nim’s mouth thins. “You think we’re putting you off.”

Finally. It’s almost a relief to say it: “Yes.”

And then the assistant director starts right back up again. “I can see why ironing out the details might feel like a waste of time from your perspective, but think about ours.” He pauses, the same kind of pause as Director-nim earlier. It says more than all his words put together. “You don’t see all the work that goes into a comeback, we have to coordinate with multiple departments, including the budget office.”

Money again. They all know the company could afford his comeback if it wanted to, but they would have to fight for him for that to happen. Instead they’re having this meeting.

“Lee Sooman seonsaengnim told me a long time ago that SM is more than its bottom line,” Taemin says. “That means I’m more than just a product, right?”

“So is every artist at this company by that rationale, including the ones who bring in more money than you,” Director-nim replies, a little too sharply. Then her face smooths over and she sits back, twirling her pen in her hands, catching Taemin’s eye when all he wants to do is look away. “I hope you can understand that I’m not attempting to diminish your career in being frank with you.”

“No, it’s fine. Honesty is what I wanted.”

“You’re way more talented than you ever had to be,” she says, like that’s the kind of thing she thinks he’d want to hear. “And that does have value for the company’s brand.”

“Not if people forget that I exist.” Somehow Taemin said that out loud. He’s 33 and he’s been in a million of these meetings over the years, fought with these people a million times, even won against them, so why has it gotten so much harder? How is it that he still doesn’t know what to say, mouth gone dry, skin running hot and cold, stomach twisting. “As long as my tours still sell out, I guess it’s fine.”

Director-nim’s expression goes a little strange, probably because he should have bitten his tongue off rather than say that. “You’re talking to me like I’m SM. I’m just a person, Taemin-ssi. You get paid a lot more than me.”

“To do a lot less. That’s what you were thinking, right?” Taemin needs to stop talking already, to find better words, stronger arguments, some way to make them listen, to at least breathe. But instead he’s saying, “We’re coming up on two years since my last album, and this is the third time we’ve started having these meetings. Every time you cancel on me, I wonder if it’ll be the third time they stop. I can understand the delays up to a certain point, although it’s not like I’d lose the company money either, considering the costs they cut in promoting someone like me.” Taemin’s hands are shaking, but they’re under the table, out of sight. The bigger problem is that his voice is too. “What I can’t understand is the lack of effort. I’ve put every single thing I have into this company for seventeen years, and I’ve never gotten as much back. Now I get nothing.”

“Excuse me?” the assistant director splutters, but Director-nim stops him with a wave of her hand, letting Taemin finish. Which he’s going to. As long as he’s saying it, he’s saying it.

“Maybe I don’t have the right to say this, but it’s not about money for me. It never has been. I didn’t start training because I wanted to get rich, I trained because this was my dream. It still is.”

As his voice dies, their silence swallows him up, louder than he can hear and bigger than he can see. He’s the one who told Jonghyun he couldn’t fight with them anymore, that he’d get hurt or they would, and now he’s said so many things he can’t take back, and his own words written across the faces of the staff, staring back at him. Director-nim’s expression is perfectly, carefully blank, which says more than anything.

But all she says finally is, “This is getting way more personal than I’m comfortable with. I’ll just reiterate: trying to rush things on your own won’t bring favorable results. If anything, it’ll create inefficiencies and cause more delays, and not just for your comeback.”

“You mean Shinee?”

Or Jonghyun and the other hyungs’ solos. It’s been so much longer for all of them and somehow Taemin is the one causing a mess. His stomach curls into a fist, so tight it makes him sick.

“That’s not our first priority, but yes, obviously.” She hesitates, before going on, “And I’d also add that being unprofessional isn’t going to do you any favors.”

“Being professional never has, either,” Taemin gets out. “And art is personal.”

“You’re a pop idol, Taemin-ssi.”

He shouldn’t have to tell her, but why does it feel like he’s telling himself? “Idols can be artists.”

“And you specialize in performance.” She sighs, probably as tired of him as he is of this, but she’s only had to deal with him for one morning, and it’s his whole life. Maybe she reads it in his face, because hers hardens. “Look, I don’t know how my predecessor ran things, and I’ve heard Lee Sooman seonsaengnim let you get away with a lot in the past, but let’s get something straight here. Sitting in on our process is very different from leading it, not that you’d know that, and seniority doesn’t qualify you to make decisions for yourself. Everything goes through me.” She taps her hand on the table for emphasis, staring him down. “Everything.”

Taemin doesn’t go straight home after they let him out. He heads to the practice room again and dances until he’s sweated out all the water in his body and there’s none left for tears, but again, the music takes him nowhere, and the choking feeling catches up to him on the ride home. If it were Jonghyun with him today, he’d read it in Taemin’s face in a second, but then, the only things Taemin has ever been able to hide from him are the things he’d never know to look for. Manager hyung talks about the weather and his wife’s crazy boss and whether he should risk eating her cooking or bring takeout home. When they reach Taemin’s building, he pulls up out front as always, and asks Taemin what time he should come tomorrow.

Same time as always. Everything is always the same in Taemin’s life. His apartment is empty and none of the hyungs are on TV and there are so many things he should be doing besides curling up in bed and fighting not to cry. He doesn’t even know if it’s rage or sadness or loneliness or something that has no name, just that it’s been living under his skin for so long and it wants out as badly as he does.

Fuck SM. Fuck this life. Fuck every single fucking day of it Taemin’s spent not sleeping, not eating, not feeling what he feels. And fuck Director-nim. Taemin doesn’t care if she’s just doing her job, when her job is to pull his strings and make him dance. And he should be so fucking tired of dancing, but the worst thing is that he’s not. He’d dance for SM for the rest of his life if it meant spending the rest of it with music, too. He’d do anything.

Anything isn’t good enough. It’s vague. Useless. If he goes in to the next meeting thinking like that, it’s going to end just like it did today.

There has to be a better way.

_Everything goes through me._

…Everything? Taemin fumbles for his phone with shaky hands. He let himself forget to turn it off after checking it in the morning, and after his meeting he let himself keep it on. It’s stayed silent this whole time, maybe waiting for him to say something first. Jonghyun has.

_Everything._

Taemin taps it out before he can second guess.

_hyung can u come over?_

Just one second staring at his own message, and his fingers fly over the keyboard to add, _its about work. bring ur phone._

Like Jonghyun wouldn’t? He doesn’t even know if Jonghyun will come and he’s telling him useless stuff like that. He’s crazy. This is crazy. He squeezes his eyes shut, heart pounding out his chest so loud he almost misses his phone buzzing.

_ill be there_

It takes Jonghyun longer than it should to arrive at Taemin’s place, and not just because time crawls so slowly and the only way Taemin can spend it is waiting for him. It’s not until the door bell buzzes that Taemin second guesses every single thing, the dishes in his sink and the shower he didn’t feel like taking and the dumb pajamas he’s wearing and. He’s out of breath before he reaches the door somehow, but Jonghyun is on the other side.

_Hyung._

The last time Taemin saw him he left him the dark with his clothes mussed and his lips swollen and his dick straining in his pants, but standing under the hallway lights, he looks like the Jonghyun hyung Taemin lived with for five years, so normal Taemin’s head spins. Baseball cap, hoodie, sweatpants, basketball shoes, all black, loaded down with a bag of food in each hand.

“I woke my mom up on my way out. Once she heard I was going to see you, she wouldn’t let me leave without this,” Jonghyun says, hefting the grocery bag in his left hand, tinted green from the melon’s skin.

“But you knew me better than that,” Taemin says, eyes travelling to the grease stained bag of chicken in his right. 

“I stopped on the way,” Jonghyun says, giving him his biggest, crinkly-eyed smile. “We can eat the fruit for dessert, it’s good for digestion.”

As Jonghyun passes through the doorway, that forbidden smell Taemin has avoided for months wafts out at him, so mouth-wateringly good it’s almost like he can taste it already. He has to wait until after he’s fetched two beers from the fridge and they spread newspapers on the living room floor, accumulated from months of Manager hyung’s boredom, and Jonghyun hunts down all the thigh pieces for him. That first bite is like one long deep breath somehow, salty and spicy sweet, grease and fat, everything bad for him. For long minutes the bones pile up between them and the only thing to break their silence is the sound of their eating, until finally Taemin can let other things in again, too. Like the way Jonghyun always holds chicken with his pinky sticking out, every other finger sticky with sauce. His socked feet, peeking out from under his folded legs. The mess of his hair, now that his cap is lying forgotten on the couch. His fang earring, which stopped being cool ten years ago. Jonghyun has always liked the things he likes, way more than he’s ever liked change. Which is maybe why he doesn’t tell Taemin he’s 33 years old, ask him what he’s learned in all this time at SM, chide him for being so unprofessional twenty years into his career, anything like that. Same as he did when Taemin was sixteen and crying over the lines they took from him in “Replay,” he listens to Taemin’s side and never asks for theirs.

“You want to use me to go around them,” he says once Taemin is talked out.

“Your demos,” Taemin corrects him immediately. “And it’s not using, you told me from the beginning that everything that’s yours is mine too.”

“I didn’t mean it as a bad thing, Taemin-ah.” Jonghyun smiles to himself, lips red with sauce, turning his chicken wing over and over between his fingers like he’s trying to find its weakness. Finally he sets it down without biting into it, raising his eyes to Taemin’s face. “I like it, if it’s you.”

This was such a bad idea. Jonghyun has been telling him things like that for twenty years, and Taemin’s body still doesn’t know any better, except for the way Jonghyun kisses, how Jonghyun’s dick feels inside him, the noises he makes as he comes. And now his heart is fluttering and his face is going hot and it’s so much harder not to be selfish than it ever was all those years before. Instead of sucking his fingers clean or kissing Jonghyun until Taemin’s mouth tastes like him and nothing else, Taemin roots around for the grease-spotted stack of napkins and passes Jonghyun some, before sitting back and crunching down on a radish, sour tang on his tongue.

“Are you really okay with it, hyung?” he says. “You’ve been blocked for a long time. I don’t want to take anything from you.”

All he has to do is ask, and Jonghyun is already nodding at him. Anything Taemin wants. “The songs that would suit you don’t suit me. A lot of the things I write end up like that.”

“There’s no such thing as a song that doesn’t suit you, hyung. You know exactly what kind of music you want to make, but you could do anything, with your voice.” Taemin makes a face at him, just for show. “Besides, you’re the one who stole ‘Cocktail’ back.”

That was supposed to be funny and nothing else, but Jonghyun’s laughter catches in his throat, and now he’s holding Taemin’s eyes, watching Taemin’s expression change. Taemin has no idea how it looks, what he’s giving away, if there’s something in it that makes Jonghyun ask, “You’re still mad about that?”

Taemin’s legs are going numb, folded beneath him. Or maybe that’s his whole body, pinned under Jonghyun’s gaze. “You are too, right~?”

Jonghyun ignored Taemin for like a week after he told him it wasn’t going on Press It, except when they were in concert rehearsals or the others were there or Taemin asked him a question he couldn’t answer without words. Then a week after that, he told Taemin he might take ‘Already’ back for his own album, until Taemin invited himself to Jonghyun’s hotel room and spread himself out over his bed and threatened to sleep there unless Jonghyun gave it back. If Jonghyun had held him to it and lain down with him that night, would this one have come years earlier?

“I wrote it for you, Taemin-ah. ‘Already’ could’ve been for anyone,” Jonghyun is saying. He hesitates, eyes narrowing. “Didn’t you read the lyrics?”

Yes. The first time Taemin read them his stomach dropped, the second time it tightened, and they stayed in his head for days, until he ended up on his knees in the bathroom of a restaurant halfway through a date, choking Jonghyun’s name back on his boyfriend’s dick. Maybe that was the first time in his life Jonghyun wrote about something he’d only received and never given, something he didn’t know anything about. And if he did know, at any point before that night in Japan…Taemin doesn’t want to.

“You knew I couldn’t sing that high,” Taemin falls back on, like always.

And like always, Jonghyun’s face softens.

“You let yourself think that,” he says, almost gently. “When it comes to dancing, nothing is ever good enough for you, you’re always looking at the next thing. With singing…I’m not saying you don’t work as hard, I know better than anyone that you have, but you give up on yourself so easily. If you just stick to what you know you’re good at, you put yourself in a box, and the longer you stay in there, the harder it is to break out.”

“It’s not me this time, it’s SM.”

“I know,” Jonghyun replies quickly. “I didn’t mean it as criticism, Taeminnie.”

Taemin stretches his legs out, leaning back against the couch too. His elbow sinks into the cushions as he props his head up with his hand. “It’s okay if you did. Sometimes I feel like you’re the only person who’s honest with me anymore. The others would count too if I saw them more.”

“You said you missed me the other night, did you forget already?” Before Taemin can answer his question with another one, ask him, _Have you tried to forget any of it,_ Jonghyun fishes in his pocket for his phone and leans over to press it into Taemin’s hand and the question changes again. _Did you feel that? I feel it every time we touch now, it doesn’t matter if it’s an accident or it only lasts a second. I don’t know how I got so bad at this._ But Jonghyun just says in a normal voice, “There’s a folder with your name on it, start there.”

There are a lot of folders, some of them with names Taemin hasn’t seen in forever, but once he finds his own, he forgets all that, scrolling endlessly, file after file after file after file. There are enough songs in here for Taemin to make albums for the rest of his life, and Jonghyun has never shown him any.

“You never asked, Taeminnie,” Jonghyun says, catching the look on his face. “I always picked for you,” he adds, and then, climbing onto his knees and starting to clean up, “A lot of them are from when you were in the military. Hyung got as bored as the rest of your fans~”

He rises to his feet, ferrying trash to the garbage can in the kitchen and leaving Taemin to choose a song at random. Somehow he feels so naked without headphones as the first few notes play, heart in his throat waiting for the lyrics, but as soon as he hears Jonghyun’s voice he forgets himself. Jonghyun comes and goes, collecting their beer cans and crumpling up the newspapers and sweeping bits of breading up into his hand and pushing Taemin out of the way until Taemin climbs up onto the couch to escape. Then he sets it to shuffle and turns the volume way up and closes his eyes. He could stay like this forever, buried beneath those layers and layers of sounds Jonghyun loves, if it weren’t for Jonghyun himself sitting down next to him and demanding, “Did you fall asleep?”

Taemin opens his eyes again to find Jonghyun watching him so closely.

“Maybe this was a bad idea. Everything sounds better when you sing it, it makes me not want to try.” Was that not funny either? Nothing Taemin says is tonight. He reaches out to touch Jonghyun’s wrist, telling him before he makes that same face from before, “I know we just talked about that, it was just a joke.”

“Do you want me to pick for you again this time?” Jonghyun says.

“Mm.”

Jonghyun takes his phone back from Taemin, fingers brushing in another shower of sparks. Taemin’s eyes linger on his face as he scrolls through the files, unable to help himself, but he barely has any time to stare before Jonghyun finds what he’s looking for and meets Taemin’s gaze again.

“It’s different from what you normally do, but you can do so much more than that,” he says as the first few notes shiver in the air, then adds in a rush, “Don’t worry about the lyrics right now. I wrote them thinking of you, but they’re still my thoughts, not yours.”

He said the same thing about ‘Pretty Boy,’ when he showed Taemin his first draft. When they went into the studio to pick the backing track together, Taemin chose the loudest, sassiest one SM had on offer and never looked back, but Jonghyun was right. This is different. Taemin is, now. Slower, quieter, so fragile Taemin would have snapped it in half trying to dance to it back then. It’s not melodramatic, not like ‘Sayonara Hitori’ or something. Maybe it wouldn’t even sound sad to anyone but him, maybe not even to Jonghyun, because Taemin’s life isn’t a sad story. That’s just self-pity. He spent years climbing, his whole life since he was old enough to remember, but the view from the top isn’t that special. You see all the same things, just further away, smaller, meaningless. Jonghyun’s voice, his song, _Jonghyun,_ is the first thing he could reach out and touch in so long.

And it already ended somehow.

“What’d you think? Hmm? Taemin-ah?” Jonghyun’s staring into his face like he’s not sure what to find, somehow, leaning over to pat Taemin’s knee, hand so big and warm. “It’s fine if you dislike it, hyung won’t get hurt. It doesn’t have to be this one, I have a million other—”

“How do you always know?”

“What?”

Taemin doesn’t know he’s going to say it until it’s already out of his mouth: “Produce my album.”

“What?” Jonghyun says again, almost flabbergasted, struggling with this even more than he struggled with Taemin’s silence. Probably because it came out of nowhere. “Taeminnie…”

The longer the silence stretches, the more terrified Taemin is that he’s just giving himself an excuse to see Jonghyun every day, that he’s only thinking of himself, that this is the worst idea he’s ever had. All he knows is that Jonghyun told him in Japan that he missed working, that he had lost inspiration, that nothing the industry sent his way appealed to him, but he’s written a hundred songs for Taemin.

“Produce my album,” Taemin repeats painfully. “I told you before, everyone else who signed up to work with me moved on. If they find another excuse to delay, you won’t even have to do anything. You can just not leave.”

Jonghyun’s mouth twists. “And let you fight them by yourself?”

 _Is that how you think of me?_ He leaves it unsaid but Taemin hears it in his voice all the same. 

“I just meant that you can focus on the parts you care about. I can handle their bullshit, hyung,” Taemin tells him. He takes a deep breath and tries smiling at Jonghyun. For the first time all day, it feels real. “It’s a good thing Director-nim showed up today, that’s the first time she’s showed any interest. Even apologizing to her will force her to listen to me.”

Jonghyun just looks at him some more. Before he can stop himself he reaches out to press his fingers into the corners of Jonghyun’s mouth, turning them up. Jonghyun catches his wrists in his hands, holding them in the air between them.

“I know you don’t need my help. Do you want it?” he says. Before Taemin can even open his mouth to reply, before he can even think of one that’s not, _I need you even more badly than I want you, how can you not know that,_ Jonghyun lets him go. “There’s a lot more to think about than just that, anyway.”

Is there? Is Taemin being stupid? This was his idea but now somehow it’s like he’s struggling to keep up, heart racing, skin buzzing, stomach curling up at the thought of Jonghyun telling him no. 

“You’ve directed me before, hyung.”

“For one song, years ago,” Jonghyun says, voice so gentle it hurts. “If you want to use the one I showed you or any of the others, I can do that again.” Something in Taemin’s face makes him pause, but his hands stay in his lap this time, no pinching Taemin’s cheek or petting his hair or any of the things that might kill Taemin right now. “As for the rest…you should think some more about what you want, if you can really work with me. It’d be a lot different, Taeminnie. We’ve always been equals in the past.”

That’s easy for Jonghyun to say, he hasn’t spent his entire career stuck being the maknae. None of them ever listened to Taemin in the early years except Jinki, sometimes, and he always forgot things as soon as he heard them. It took until Taemin’s solo debut for Jonghyun to stop seeing him as a child, and even now, he still tries to shield him from things. It took Jonghyun getting blackout drunk years after the fact for him to tell Taemin that some creepy old ahjussi had tried to buy Taemin’s info off Manager hyung, and Taemin never had the heart to tell him in return that he’d heard a lot worse.

But all that is so far from the point. Taemin doesn’t know what there is to say, except, “I don’t mind calling you PD-nim, as long as you call me Taemin-ssi.”

That’s not it, either.

“I couldn’t always be on your side, Taeminnie.” Jonghyun’s mouth curls into an ironic half-smile. “Taemin-ssi. I’d have to be hard on you.”

“That’s harder for you to do than it is for me to take,” Taemin says, but maybe that’s what Jonghyun was trying to tell him. Even now, all Taemin ever does is think of himself. “You can just say no, hyung.”

For one long moment, so long Taemin almost gives up on a reply, Jonghyun just looks at him. Really looks. His eyes never leave Taemin’s face, but he still leaves Taemin feeling naked.

And then finally, in this voice that stops Taemin’s heart, “Do you really think I could?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have asked,” comes flying out of Taemin in this awful rush, but that’s better than leaning forward those few inches and kissing Jonghyun again like every cell in his body is aching for. He just asked to work together, what the fuck is he even thinking? Nothing, clearly, because the next thing out of his mouth is, “Do you want to stay the night? Otherwise you’ll just wake your mom up again,” and then, “Don’t say yes if you don’t mean it. That hurts me more.”

He’s half-risen from his seat when Jonghyun grabs his hand, sudden and warm, cutting him off at the knees. The cushions are so soft, catching Taemin’s fall, when all he needs is something to hit him hard, make him wake up, snap him to his senses.

“I’ll do it,” Jonghyun says.

“You should think about it too.” Instead of pulling free like he should, Taemin squeezes Jonghyun’s hand. “Think of yourself. I’ll be fine on my own, hyung.”

“I won’t be, though,” Jonghyun replies, so fast Taemin’s head spins. The rest comes slower, Jonghyun hanging onto him so tight, eyes glued to his face, almost like he’s scared to put it out there. “Honestly…it would probably be better for me than it will be for you. I told you, I’ve been going crazy. I should get back to work before I forget how.”

Is that a yes? A real one. Taemin’s heart does this weird thing, flying and falling, leaving him dizzy, and he’s smiling so hard it hurts. Is this really okay? Is it okay for him to say something dumb like, “I’m gonna be hard on you, too. My standards are really high~”

Yes. Jonghyun smiles, eyes crinkling up, thumb stroking across Taemin’s knuckles, and everything inside Taemin slows down and speeds up, all at the same time. “They should be. You’re worth everything, Taeminnie.”

“Stay.” It takes so much to stop himself from punctuating it with a kiss. It would’ve taken so much more to say what he should have: _You know what this means, right? Us working together._ Nothing’s changed, anyway. This time when he stands up Jonghyun lets him go, hand slipping from his and landing in his lap, dark eyes following Taemin across the room, towards the kitchen. “It’s late enough for even you to sleep. I have blankets and stuff, the couch is really comfortable. Jonginnie sleeps on it all the time.”

At least he used to. It’s been months since the last time.

The melon is sitting out on the counter so Taemin has no excuse to stand in front of the fridge and freeze the heat from his face. He shouldn’t be using the fruit Jonghyun’s mother gave him as an excuse to hide from her son, and it doesn’t work anyway. He’s barely sawed it in half when Jonghyun steps up beside him.

He presses his shoulder into Taemin’s, warm and solid. “You sure you don’t want hyung to do it?”

“I’m not thirteen anymore, hyung. I haven’t been in a long time.”

Taemin cuts it again into quarters, then wedges his thumb between the flesh and the rind, peeling it. Is that good enough? For a beast, maybe. Taemin picks up the knife again and chops it into pieces, clumsy under Jonghyun’s eyes, almost slicing his finger open when Jonghyun makes a low amused sound.

“Look at how you hold that knife, you’re lucky I’m not Kibummie~”

That’s only a little better than _give it to me before you hurt yourself,_ but that’s coming next if Taemin’s not careful. Whatever. “What matters is if it tastes good. It’s your fault if it doesn’t, not mine.”

“Uh huh, blame the person who’s here. Mom said she bought it today, it should be really fresh.” Jonghyun leans in on his arms, catching Taemin’s eye. “Let me try a piece.”

Jonghyun could just take one, but instead he stands there and stares and stares and stares, until finally Taemin gives in and feeds him. He already knows it’s a mistake before Jonghyun’s lips are at his fingertips, so soft he could die, juice running down his wrist as Jonghyun bites down. Jonghyun’s hand closes around it, bringing it to his mouth before Taemin can even think, and that stops being an option as soon as Jonghyun’s tongue presses against his skin, licking it clean, so hot and wet Taemin’s fingers curl into a fist. Then there are his teeth too, just barely digging into Taemin’s flesh, tiniest flicker of pain-pleasure that explodes through Taemin’s body. As Jonghyun suckles his wrist, his eyes find Taemin’s, blacker than black. Taemin doesn’t know how he’s pulled away until he’s on the other side of the room, dumping the knife in the sink. No. Washing it. That’s safer, that’s a bigger excuse, washing dishes is the least hot thing there is, except somehow the water is already scalding when Taemin tests it. _Fuck._

Jonghyun begins from way too close, “Taemin-ah—”

“It’s an even worse idea now than it was before.” And that’s Taemin’s voice somehow. “You do know that, right? You should. You’re smarter than me.”

That barely says anything. Taemin is so fucking dumb, he’s the one who kissed Jonghyun that night and he’s the one who called him here, and now he can’t even look at him. And he forgot he needed dish soap. He barely has to squeeze down before too much oozes out, bubbles rising up like a wall.

“You’re more worried about your album than you were about everything else?” Jonghyun says to him. “It doesn’t change anything, Taeminnie. We already agreed to be professional. I won’t be hyung in the studio.”

“You just said yourself, you have a harder time separating it out than I do,” Taemin gets out. And then somehow, “You can’t look at me like that when we’re working, either.”

“Like what?” Jonghyun reaches across Taemin and flicks the faucet off, taking hold of Taemin’s wrists and turning him to face him, and Taemin’s one thought is that his hands are full of suds, it’s safe, he’d taste like poison if Jonghyun tried it again. He forgets all that the moment he meets Jonghyun’s eyes again, along with every single other thing. “Like what, Taeminnie?”

“Like you want to fuck me.”

Jonghyun’s mouth curls, something between a smile and a smirk. “You’ve been looking at me, too. All night. How long did you last before you texted me?”

Taemin lasted so long. He tried so hard. None of it means anything anymore the minute he leans in to press his mouth to Jonghyun’s. Nothing does, except this. Jonghyun groans lowly, falling into it, and then he has Jonghyun’s tongue in his mouth and his back hits the counter, Jonghyun crushing him up against it, so warm and solid everywhere Taemin touches him, hands soaking into Jonghyun’s hoodie. His neck, his shoulders, his back, muscles shifting beneath Taemin’s palms. Taemin only remembers he needs air when Jonghyun breaks away to press kisses down Taemin’s neck, and he’s left hanging onto him, dizzy and breathless, struggling to form words.

“This has to be the last time, hyung. Really. We can’t work together and do this, we’ll both go crazy. Crazier.”

His voice breaks into a moan as Jonghyun’s teeth scrape across his skin and he opens his mouth on it, all hot and wet and _fuck,_ just to tell him, “We need to talk about it.”

“Not right now,” not when Taemin can feel Jonghyun’s dick hardening against his thigh, so thick and hot and all for him. Taemin presses into it and Jonghyun makes this noise, hips jerking against his.

“There’s a lot I could say,” Jonghyun says breathlessly. He slides his hands down Taemin’s back and into his pants, elastic stretching around his wrists as he squeezes Taemin’s ass, squeezing a moan out of him, loud and breathy, hands so big and hot and rough against Taemin’s skin, fingertips so so close to Taemin’s hole. “When did you start wearing pajamas like this? You looked so cute I could barely taste my food, I wanted to eat you so bad.”

He could. He could spin Taemin around and bend him over the counter and yank his pants down around his thighs and fuck him with his tongue, and all Taemin would ever say about it is more and please and _I don’t need lube, hyung, this is enough. Hyung. I went all week without your dick, just put it in me, please._ Instead Jonghyun squeezes his ass again and presses in closer, forcing Taemin up onto his toes, counter biting into the backs of his thighs, Jonghyun’s stomach so warm and firm against Taemin’s dick he can barely breathe. He tangles his fingers in Jonghyun’s hair and pulls until he has Jonghyun’s mouth on his again, sucking on his bottom lip, sliding his tongue inside, rubbing it up against Jonghyun’s, so hot and wet and dirty his toes curl. He hooks his calf around Jonghyun’s, pressing closer, tracing Jonghyun’s spine, desperate for skin-on-skin, not layers and layers of baggy clothes. When he slips his hands up Jonghyun’s shirt, Jonghyun moans, tiny and broken.

“Don’t ignore me like that again,” he breaks their kiss to demand, lips brushing Taemin’s with every word. He spreads Taemin’s cheeks, fingers digging into his flesh, fabric stretching to breaking, leaving him feeling emptier than he has all week, hole clenching around nothing. “Please, Taeminnie. I can’t survive without you. I haven’t jerked off this much since I was fifteen, just the thought of you gets me hard.”

Taemin’s first thought shouldn’t be all the come he’s wasted, enough to fill Taemin’s ass and his mouth and coat every inch of his skin. Maybe it should be, _Is this all I am to you?_ But that’s stupid too, so stupid. This is Jonghyun. They’ve only had one night together, but Taemin has spent so many others with Jonghyun’s arm as a pillow and Jonghyun telling him things like, _Don’t be scared to sleep, Taemin-ah. I’ll be here when you wake up, and after that, too, I’ll be there the whole time. You’ll be fine. Kibummie will hog the camera anyway, you won’t have to say much._ Even then, lying there staring into Jonghyun’s face gave him butterflies, and waking up hard in Jonghyun’s arms is how he found out he liked men. And now he has Jonghyun's dick pushing into his thigh, so hard and all for him, Jonghyun’s skin at his fingertips as he rucks his shirt and hoodie up, and once it’s over his head, he has Jonghyun’s lips on his again, his tongue and teeth, his hands everywhere on Taemin’s body, his hair, the nape of his neck, and back to his ass, through his pants this time, fingers curling, blunt and knowing and so frustrating Taemin can taste it, cotton rubbing up against his hole when all he wants is Jonghyun’s fingers, Jonghyun’s tongue, Jonghyun’s dick, _Jonghyun._ His muscles play under Taemin’s palms, back and rising and falling with each breath he takes, his abs pressed up so tight against Taemin’s dick, trapped in his pajama pants, so firm and solid they make Taemin frantic. He’s helpless to stop himself from rubbing his body up against Jonghyun, white-hot friction from shoulders to hips. He could come like this, just like this, make a mess of himself, but then Jonghyun slides his hands down to the backs of Taemin’s thighs and lifts him up instead.

Jonghyun swallows Taemin’s squawk of surprise, leaving Taemin to cling onto him for dear life, arms and legs wrapped around him so tight it’s amazing Jonghyun can fit air in his lungs at all. His breathing is so light and even in Taemin’s ear that Taemin is probably supposed to hear instead, _See, Taeminnie, you don’t weigh anything~,_ but that’s not what’s making Taemin weak or sending heat blistering through him. _Do you think you’re strong enough to hold me up and fuck me, hyung?_ Taemin finds Jonghyun’s mouth with his own, crossing his ankles at his back and squeezing his hips between his thighs, setting his fingernails into his shoulders, almost blind with desperation at the thought. But instead of crushing Taemin up against the nearest wall and impaling him on his dick, fucking him until he can’t walk on his own, Jonghyun makes it all the way back to the couch, falling back onto the cushions with a lapful of Taemin. Then his legs stop working anyway at the feel of Jonghyun’s dick against his ass, so hot and thick and hard. The rest of Jonghyun doesn’t help either, hair mussed, lips swollen and shiny with Taemin’s spit, curled into the tiniest smile, shoulders so broad under Taemin’s hands, little nipples tightened into peaks, perfect impossible abs rising and falling. He lets Taemin kiss and lick down his neck, skin so soft and smooth under his tongue, between his teeth. Taemin bites down and Jonghyun gasps. Harder and Jonghyun’s fingers tighten on his hips, pressing a new set of bruises into Taemin’s skin, and then he thrusts up against Taemin, and Taemin’s body sears white hot. It’s instinct when he moves with Jonghyun, meeting his hips, arching into his dick as it rubs up the crack of his ass, lips mashed against Jonghyun’s skin, moaning into it. They need to be naked already. No more fucking pants, or else Taemin really might come in them.

Before he can rise to his knees and yank his pants down around his ass, reach back and spread his cheeks, figure out how to get Jonghyun’s dick out without giving him up for a second, Jonghyun tips him over onto the couch. He lands with his legs splayed and his head against the armrest, Jonghyun kneeling between his thighs. Taemin only meets his eyes because he can’t look away, even as he hooks his fingers in his waistband and lifts his butt to pull them down, but then Jonghyun takes over, tugging them down past his knees, until Taemin’s feet are free, giving Taemin so much time for his blush to fade. Instead it deepens, hiding his face in the crook of his elbow, whole body going hot and cold as he lies still under Jonghyun’s gaze, dick stupidly hard, throbbing in the open air. It was dark last time.

Jonghyun’s fingers trail over the length of his dick, light, barely there, sending shivers of pleasure shooting through Taemin’s body, and then he wraps his hand around it, so big and hot and sure. Taemin bucks up into his grip, helpless to bite back, “Please, hyung.”

“Please what?”

Jonghyun just barely squeezes down, making Taemin see stars.

“Fuck me,” he demands breathlessly.

Jonghyun hesitates, lip caught between his teeth. Taemin doesn’t need a reply, he just needs Jonghyun’s dick, but Jonghyun takes all the time in the world, sliding his hand up and down Taemin’s length, twisting his wrist, watching his face for every little sign of pleasure he wrings out of him.

“There’s something I want to try again,” Jonghyun confesses finally. “Let me?”

“Anything.”

Including fucking him, hauling Taemin’s legs over his shoulders again and seeing what that does to Taemin’s face, flipping Taemin over and fucking into him, letting Taemin ride his dick until his muscles give out, but instead Jonghyun releases him and sits back. The couch cushions shift and sink under his weight as he settles on his stomach between Taemin’s legs, resting his head against his thigh, soft soft hair tickling his skin, breath caressing Taemin’s dick, so warm and gentle Taemin could die. He nestles in closer, then closer, until his lips brush Taemin’s dick, each word burning into his skin, “Tell me how you like it, Taeminnie. I want to make it good for you.” Taemin feels Jonghyun’s smile, hot puff of air that makes his hips twitch helplessly. “It kills me to know you’ve had better.”

What?

Before he can even think, Taemin is telling him, “I don’t compare it,” but then he does, and his stomach twists. Is Jonghyun saying…?

“I don’t either,” Jonghyun tells him quickly, cutting straight through the knot in his stomach and leaving him weak with relief. At least until he adds, “I just meant I’m good with my mouth, normally. I could make you forget everyone else.” Just the fact that it’s him is enough. Taemin has spent so much of his life closing his eyes and seeing Jonghyun while other men kissed him and touched him and fucked him and made him come, and now somehow Jonghyun is licking and kissing his way up Taemin’s dick, soft and open-mouthed and lingering, before he presses his lips to the head, tongue darting out to taste his precome. His bottom lip catches on Taemin’s dick as he just barely pulls away to ask, “Is that too greedy of me?”

Taemin winds his fingers in Jonghyun’s hair, so shaky he can barely find the words to say, “You can’t talk and do it, hyung.”

“Do what?”

Taemin tugs at him uselessly, already trying so hard not to pull, to be gentle, that he can’t keep the whine from escaping his lips. “Hyung~”

Jonghyun’s mouth curves, black eyes burning into him as his hand curls around the base of Taemin’s dick. “What do you want me to do?”

“Suck me.” Taemin’s face flames at the sound of his own voice, breathy and broken, spilling out of him, “Please, hyung, please,” as Jonghyun gives it to him, stretching his lips over his teeth and taking him into his mouth, little by little, until the head bumps up against the inside of Jonghyun’s cheek, all soft and slick and _fuck,_ and when Taemin’s vision clears he can see it bulging out. “Hyung, fuck.”

Jonghyun groans around him, low and strangled, vibrations shooting up Taemin’s spine. He needs a few moments to adjust, breathing harshly through his nose, fingers flexing around the base of Taemin’s dick, and it takes everything Taemin has to give them to him, petting his hair, biting back his pleas, digging his heels helplessly into the couch cushions in his effort to keep his hips still. And then Jonghyun tightens his lips around him, flattening his tongue to the underside, sucking on him, tight wet heat that makes Taemin’s thighs tremble and his back arch. He almost pulls off on his way back up, licking at the slit, eyes flicking up to Taemin’s face before they slide shut and he takes him in again. Just that little bit deeper, hand sliding up Taemin’s dick to meet his lips, fist as tight as his mouth, building up a rhythm that sets Taemin’s blood on fire, up and down and in and out, wrist twisting, tongue dragging over Taemin’s skin, rough and soft and wet and hot and, “Don’t stop, please.”

Jonghyun’s eyes snap up to his face again, and this time he does pull off. If he says anything he’ll probably end Taemin, but instead he rubs his lips down the side of Taemin’s dick, stare pinning Taemin in place, putting his mouth on every inch he couldn’t fit inside him, lapping at the base before dragging his tongue up the underside, too much and not enough all at the same time. His hand slips in his own spit as it glides up Taemin’s length, squeezing around him as Jonghyun’s lips close around the head again, suckling it. When he takes Taemin in again, his mouth leaves Taemin in pieces, so hot and wet he could die, and that’s before Taemin feels his fingertip pressed up against his hole. His hips jerk before he can stop himself, fucking up into Jonghyun’s wet heat, but instead of spluttering, pulling off, gasping for air, Jonghyun moans around him, loud and desperate. Taemin should be making sure he’s okay, that he didn’t hurt him, stroking apologies into Jonghyun’s hair, not yanking at it as Jonghyun does this thing with his tongue and his finger pushes inside him, raw thick slide of it making him see white.

Two fingers.

“I’m so close, I can’t,” Taemin tries to warn him, but that just makes Jonghyun moan again, bobbing his head, fucking his mouth onto Taemin’s dick, smooth slick rhythm, fingers so deep inside Taemin can feel his knuckles pressed up against his ass, and then he crooks them, and there. _There._ “I can’t hold it in anymore, I’m gonna come,” pulling at his hair, trying to pull him off, because what if Jonghyun hates it, what if he doesn’t want it, Taemin _warned_ him, but Jonghyun hits that spot again, again again again, hard and fast and relentless, yanking against Taemin’s hold to take his dick deeper somehow, sucking and sucking on him, so hot, so wet Taemin can hear it, and the breath leaves Taemin’s body. There are no words left, just, “Jonghyunnie hyung,” whining and moaning and crying out. “Hyung!”

His hips jerk as he comes in Jonghyun’s mouth, coming and coming and coming, hole clenching helplessly around the length of Jonghyun’s fingers. Jonghyun suckles him through it, swallowing everything, so good it hurts almost, before finally he pulls off with a pop. Taemin is still in a daze, melting into the couch as Jonghyun rises up to kneel between his legs, pulling his sweats and briefs down around his ass and getting his dick out, head red and weeping precome, poking out his fist. Mouth thick with want, Taemin watches him get closer, straddling Taemin’s body with one foot on the floor, other knee sinking into the cushions next to his hip, bracing himself on the armrest by Taemin’s head, muscles standing out. His other hand is busy rucking Taemin’s shirt up, exposing his stomach. The cool air prickles at his skin, before Jonghyun slides his dick across his abs, so hot and thick, smearing precome into it, filling Taemin with desperation, even as he lies here soft and sated. Taemin slips his hands down over his stomach, trying to push his fat up around Jonghyun’s dick, give him something to fuck, but there’s not enough of it. Jonghyun laughs at him breathlessly.

“Where do you want it?” he asks, thrusting against Taemin shallowly.

That’s easy. “Inside me.”

“Later.” The head of his dick rubs over Taemin’s navel, so impossibly big pressed up against it, filling it with precome. Jonghyun breathes out, slow and shaky, dragging his eyes back up to Taemin’s face. “I’m not going to last long.”

“Then my mouth.”

Jonghyun smiles helplessly, telling him, “You’re so greedy, baby.”

“Like you’re not?”

He just drank down all Taemin’s come, did he forget? But no, his laughter catches in his throat, hips jerking into his own grip, and he knee walks up Taemin’s body, dick bobbing closer and closer, until Taemin can stick his tongue out and taste it. Jonghyun shudders above him, chest heaving as he stares down at him.

“I tried so hard not to imagine you like this up till now, you don’t even know,” he says, hand gliding up and down his dick, thumb pressing into the head and slicking precome down his length. All Taemin wants to do is lean forward and take it into his mouth, suckle the head until it spurts on his tongue, but Jonghyun’s eyes on his face stop him. “Even in my head, it was always some other man’s come.”

In his head, it was always Jonghyun’s.

“If you get it in my hair you have to wash it out.” _Don’t hold back. Do it. Please._ “Otherwise I’ll eat it off your fingers.”

“Fuck, Taeminnie, the things you do to me,” Jonghyun gets out.

Taemin pulls his hand off his dick and replaces it with his own, so thick Taemin can hardly close his fingers around it, before Jonghyun’s hand comes down over his, big and sure, guiding him, showing him how he likes it, how to make Jonghyun moan, how to make him lose control and fuck into Taemin’s grip and get him to say, _“Taeminnie.”_ Finally Jonghyun’s fingers tighten around his, holding his hand in place as he ruts into Taemin’s palm, force of his thrusts shaking the couch beneath their bodies. His breathing sharpens and his face twists and his other hand sinks into Taemin’s hair, yanking his head back, making Taemin’s own dick twitch helplessly, but later. Jonghyun said there would be a later, he said he’d fuck him, put his dick inside him and fill him up with come, his ass and his mouth and. Taemin closes his eyes and opens his mouth wide and waits for it.

Jonghyun groans, this low broken sound like nothing he’s ever heard, and then suddenly it hits his face, his cheeks his nose his eyes his lips. His tongue. Hot and wet and sticky and everywhere, taste like nothing else.

Jonghyun’s come.

For long endless moments, Taemin lies there and lets Jonghyun look while it clumps up in his eyelashes, but by the time he’s worked up to opening his eyes, Jonghyun is gone. He returns with a washcloth, sinking down next to Taemin and wiping his face clean so tenderly that Taemin can’t even be mad that he didn’t listen and feed it to him. He lets Taemin draw him down for a kiss, slow and soft.

“Do you really want me to sleep on the couch?” Jonghyun murmurs, lips brushing his with each word, and even with the taste of Jonghyun’s come in his mouth, his voice still makes Taemin so weak. 

His eyes make him even weaker, so dark, staring into Taemin’s. Taemin shakes his head, before making himself add, “Just for tonight.”

“But not in the morning?” Jonghyun says, leaning in for another lingering kiss, teeth just barely pressing into Taemin’s bottom lip before his tongue licks over it. “I can’t stop thinking of how you looked in the shower.”

“Not how I looked in the bath?”

Jonghyun smiles, slow and secret. “You don’t have an onsen in your apartment.”

Heat billows up in Taemin’s stomach, thoughts racing so far ahead of him, sinking to his knees under the spray of the water and letting Jonghyun fuck his mouth, bracing himself up against the wall while Jonghyun takes him long and slow from behind, just jerking each other off, hands slippery with soap. Just Jonghyun wet and naked. Just Jonghyun.

“Haven’t you thought about me at all?” Jonghyun asks him.

“I always do, that’s normal.”

Taemin doesn’t realize that it’s a mistake until his words are left hanging in the air between them. He squeezes his eyes shut before they hit Jonghyun’s face, leaning in and covering Jonghyun’s mouth with his own, kissing him until he forgets to reply, slow and wet and open-mouthed, tongues and teeth. When Jonghyun breaks away, it’s only to stand, sliding his hands under Taemin’s knees and arms and lifting him up again. It barely surprises Taemin this time to feel the ground fall away from him, body cradled in Jonghyun’s arms. Instead this weird feeling takes hold, lighter than air, yet crushing in on him so close he can hardly breathe. He clings to Jonghyun and turns his face into his neck, letting Jonghyun carry him to bed.

Taemin wakes up to Jonghyun again.

This time he’s laying all the way on the other side of the bed, stretched out with his arms hugging his pillow, toes just barely grazing Taemin’s calf. One of them must have moved in the night. Instead of listening to his heart, snuggling up to him again, trapping him with his arms and legs and safely falling back to sleep, Taemin sits up and grabs his phone to turn his alarm off before it can ring. Jonghyun’s is lying right next to it.

Taemin turns to take one more look at him, face softened with sleep, mouth curved into the tiniest smile, eyes flickering as he dreams. Then he reaches for Jonghyun’s phone. It takes him three tries to guess Jonghyun’s passcode, first his mom’s birthday, then his sister’s, and finally his own. That feeling from last night is back as he finds his way back to the folder with his name on it, the song Jonghyun played him, except it hurts so much more on the other side. For endless moments, he hesitates. He still doesn’t know if this is an excuse to see Jonghyun every day or if it’s really the end, and this was really the last time, just that the last time will come, and sooner is better for them both. Before this pain gets sharp enough to kill. 

Taemin takes a deep breath and submits it to Creative.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning just in case, there's spanking in the first sex scene.

“Take it from the top, Taemin-ssi.”

After a week and a half, it’s still so weird to hear Jonghyun call him that, even when he softens it with a smile that goes back years and years. He leans back from the mic long before it fades, making it that much harder for Taemin to drag his eyes away from his face in the control room window and focus on the lyric sheet in front of him. He just barely slips his headphones back over his ears in time for the song to start, but he hits his cue, and once he starts to sing, there’s no room for anything else in his head. His voice doesn’t want to cooperate with him, straining and thinning out, and somehow after ten takes he still hasn’t figured out where to breathe. The whole time it feels like the song is going to get away from him, like he’s just trying to keep up, and it’s barely begun when somehow it’s over already, like breaking the surface when he felt like he was sinking. As the playback fades and the final note shivers in the air, his world widens past the mic clenched in his hand to include Jonghyun again. And the engineers sitting at the control panel next to him, and the Creative staffer sitting on their recording session, and Manager hyung, who’s probably still stretched out on the couch in the next room with his book over his face. But Jonghyun.

“Was that any better?” Taemin says as he slips the headphones back down around his neck, even though he already knows the answer: no. He keeps making the same mistakes in all the same places.

“It’s not about better or worse, Taeminnie—Taemin-ssi.” Jonghyun bites back a smile at his own mistake, clearing his throat and going on, “From a technical perspective, you’re fine.”

He’s being too generous when they both know better, but Taemin can’t stop it from coming out of his mouth: “Just fine?”

It’s so hard to keep the smile off his own face, but so much more fun to watch Jonghyun struggle to keep a straight face and explain in his most professional PD-nim voice, “You’re singing with too much tension and straining in parts, but other than that.”

“You wrote it too high again.”

Jonghyun breaks, just that little bit, corners of his mouth twitching up, laughter in his voice as he tells Taemin, “It’s not out of your range.” He clears his throat. “Most of what we’ve recorded so far is usable, if you want to think about it on those terms. We’d have to splice things together and go heavier on the pitch correction than I’d like, but that’s normal.”

For some reason “normal” sounds even worse than “fine” did, to the point that Taemin can’t make a joke out of it. If he were really being normal, maybe he wouldn’t have nailed a take by now, but he wouldn’t be wasting everyone else’s time and messing around like this either. It’s not Taemin’s fault Jonghyun wore his glasses today, that he keeps biting his lip, or that his voice sounds like that through the microphone, but it is his fault that Jonghyun’s hair is standing on end from all the times he’s run his fingers through it.

“Was it any closer to what you wanted, though?” Taemin asks. “You said to be softer.”

“Vulnerable,” Jonghyun corrects him. So in other words, the answer is no again.

“Should I try singing badly?”

Taemin was being serious, kind of, but all Jonghyun has to do is narrow his eyes at him and say, “What?” and he’s right back to where he started, laughter bubbling up inside him.

“If I give up on sounding good, maybe people will sympathize more,” Taemin says.

“That’s not what I meant,” Jonghyun replies, more helpless than stern. “There are ways to do it well.”

“For you, maybe.”

“Taemin-ssi~”

Taemin only said it to make Jonghyun make that face, push him that little bit further, but it’s the truth. Jonghyun can express so much with his voice, from annoyance to heartbreak, sexy and cute and soft and hard and vulnerable and powerful, sometimes everything at once. Every song he’s ever sung, he’s made his own somehow, and the guide for this one was no different. Taemin knew from the first time he listened to it that even in the studio with technology on his side, he’d never be able to reproduce what Jonghyun could do, singing to himself at home. He’s never had that kind of control, and he’ll never have Jonghyun’s voice. His will have to be enough.

Which means he has to take this seriously. “What ways?”

Jonghyun rubs his thumb over his lip, hesitating like he’s figuring out how to say this. “The problem isn’t with your voice, it’s you. You’re too in your head. The lyrics have probably stopped meaning anything to you, you’ve read them so many times.”

Taemin could read them a million times and that would never happen. He’s just scared to let them mean too much.

He fumbles for his headphones, sliding them up over his ears before they can go red, trapping the flush of heat inside. “Take it from the top?”

Jonghyun hesitates again, and then tells him instead, “Take a break. Drink some water.”

“I can go now, I’m fine.”

“Everyone else here smokes, they’re probably going crazy,” Jonghyun says, shooting him another smile, big and crinkly-eyed, before he glances around at the staff crowded in around him. “Is fifteen minutes enough?”

The words have barely left his mouth before the engineers take his word for it, rising and stretching and shuffling through the door, voices carrying down the hallway as they pass by the vocal booth. There’s nothing keeping Taemin in here, either, he could go move Manager hyung’s legs and steal the third seat of the couch, or maybe go up to the roof. The view from up there isn’t as good as the main building, but it’s not bad, either, and it’s way less dangerous than the view from where he stands. Jonghyun is staring, too. Slumped forward in his chair, chin in his hand and elbow propped up on the control panel, glasses slipping down his nose, wordless, motionless, waiting for Taemin to blink first. Which he always does. He slips his headphones back off with clumsy fingers, only remembering to hang them on the mic stand when he almost strangles himself reaching for the tall metal stool in the corner. He’s been standing all morning, but that’s not enough of an excuse for his legs to be so weak as he drags it over and sits down.

“Hyung.” Jonghyun watches his lips form the word, before Taemin remembers the mic, wresting it from its stand and speaking into it. “PD-nim.”

After Taemin fucking with him all morning, all Jonghyun says is, “You don’t have to call me that when there’s no one around. Even if there is, I don’t mind. It’s not like they don’t know our relationship.”

Just that one word out of Jonghyun’s mouth, and Taemin’s body goes hot, even though it’s been a month since the night they spent together in Taemin’s apartment. And the morning Jonghyun cooked breakfast in his kitchen, which they ate cold, half an hour later, after Jonghyun bent him over the counter and came inside him again. It’s been weeks since the last dirty text Jonghyun sent him, on top of that, ever since Jonghyun started attending the meetings with Taemin, and Director-nim called them both in at the end of December and told them, _Let’s just take it one song at a time and see how things progress. With what we’ve approved already, you should have enough to get started._ Taemin spent Christmas and New Year’s with his parents and Jonghyun probably spent them with his mom, and by the time they stepped foot in the studio, it felt like forever since the last time they were alone together. Now they see each other so much there’s no point in phones, and it’s always about work, and there’s almost always someone else there, exactly the way Taemin said it had to be. And yet somehow he’s the one pushing. It’s just so hard to be good when he has Jonghyun’s eyes on him all day every day.

Like right now, he should be letting it go, but instead he’s saying, “You don’t like it? Me calling you that.”

“What is it?” Jonghyun says instead of replying.

This is Taemin’s album. The album he spent the last six months discussing and all the time since his last comeback thinking about, the lifeline he needs to keep his career going. So what if Jonghyun is the man he’s been dreaming about for half his life, that never used to get in his way before, even back when Shinee was at their peak and he couldn’t get away from Jonghyun if he tried, and his heart was still breaking same as now. Taemin squeezes his eyes shut so tight it hurts, then opens them again. Jonghyun is still there, watching him.

“You know how I am. I can’t cry in front of people. Even with dancing, I’ve never been able to show that side of myself,” Taemin says.

“You’ve pushed so many boundaries in your performances, but never that one,” Jonghyun agrees, nodding. That’s the least helpful thing he’s said all day, maybe because it’s the furthest from what Taemin wanted to hear.

“I know I’m not perfect, I know everyone else knows that too.” The admission barely costs him anything, not with Jonghyun’s eyes holding his, but he’s never put this next thing in words before. Ever. “It’s just…my whole career, I’ve never just been myself. That scares me more than anything.”

“If you don’t want the song to be about you, then it won’t be, Taemin-ah,” Jonghyun replies, so gently Taemin could die. “You always think I get so personal, but even with She Is, I played a character. He shared my thoughts and feelings and experiences, but there was a separation. And in this case, I wrote it, not you. You probably see yourself differently than I do.”

“You know me better than I know myself,” Taemin says. “It feels like me. Not just the lyrics, the song itself.”

For one endless moment, Jonghyun just looks at him. It’s so much harder than it should be after everything to sit there and let him. The hand that’s not holding the mic curls into a fist in Taemin’s lap, but he holds on, keeping his shoulders straight, his head up.

Then finally, Jonghyun tells him, “Let it.”

Heat curls in Taemin’s stomach and his heart flutters and his body never makes any sense, but somehow Taemin has to.

“Is that what you meant earlier?”

About vulnerability, he means, but Jonghyun is so far ahead of him. He smiles at Taemin, this slow, tiny curve of his lips. “No one else will know but me.”

It’s ten in the morning on a workday and Taemin is sitting here bare faced under bright lights, dressed in the most formless, comfortable things he could find in his closet, and the engineers and manager hyung are all outside, and he’s been coming here since he was a kid, and somehow Jonghyun’s eyes make him feel naked.

Taemin should get up and keep walking until he finds a door and the cold winter air freezes everything inside him, but instead he’s asking, “Are you saying that as hyung or Kim PD?”

Jonghyun’s smile widens. “Both.”

And just like that, it’s all over. Taemin wants him so badly he can’t see straight. He can’t have him, though. They’re here to work. It’s way too late for a quickie in the bathroom, even if that were enough for either of them after weeks of nothing, and he’s not going to spend the afternoon session half-naked in Jonghyun’s car, riding Jonghyun’s dick until Jonghyun is saying his name with every breath. He’s not going to spend it imagining that, either. Or say dumb stuff like, “PD-nim.”

“Mm.”

“PD-nim.”

“What?”

“Kim PD. Jjong PD~”

Finally Jonghyun breaks. Even if he hides his smile behind his hand, his laughter rings loud and clear through the microphone, and when he can speak again it’s to insist, “It’s not like you’re guesting on Blue Night or something, I’m your boss. You should listen to me.”

Taemin should. Even if it’s not his fault that Jonghyun is so cute. Or that as soon as his smile fades and he pushes his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, Jonghyun goes back to being so sexy Taemin can barely think.

If he ever gets this song right, it won’t be thanks to anything Taemin did, either.

“If I look at you when I’m singing, look back at me,” Taemin says. “It helps.”

That’s the most serious Taemin has been all morning, so of course Jonghyun has to come back with, “Whenever it was me saying that, you always made faces at me to mess me up.”

Taemin makes a face at him now, scrunching his nose and narrowing his eyes and puckering his lips. “That’s something hyung would say.”

Jonghyun’s mouth curls. “Hyung could say a lot of things.”

Starting with, _You’re the one who decided we should stop sleeping together, so why are you torturing me? Stop teasing, Taeminnie._

“What about PD-nim?” Taemin makes himself say.

Another long endless moment under Jonghyun’s eyes, and Taemin is right back to feeling naked. He’ll only feel more so when the break is over and he has nowhere left to run, nothing left to hide behind. Jonghyun’s song and Jonghyun’s lyrics are already his, but that makes it so much harder to get them right somehow. To let everyone see parts of himself he’s only ever shown Jonghyun.

“Look only at me,” Jonghyun says.

_I’m yours, hyung._

Somehow the clock keeps moving and they burn through their studio time. They take another break for lunch, just sandwiches Manager hyung picked up from the shop down the street, and as the afternoon session wears on, Jonghyun keeps giving Taemin ten minutes to rest his voice, drink water, clear his head, when all Taemin wants to do is keep going. He slides in and out of focus every time the song starts and stops, but even as the lyrics start to blur together, Jonghyun’s eyes stay locked on him, dark and endless. Taemin would give him everything if he could, break himself open and let Jonghyun decide to do with what he finds inside, but instead he’s left struggling to bring it out into the open. His voice is so far from being enough, clumsy, slow, sloppy, hollow, but it’s all he has. And it’s all he can do to make himself listen to all the notes Jonghyun gives him, make himself follow his direction, accept his criticism, softened so much it hits even harder, and not fall back on, _I’m not you, hyung. I can’t be you._ Jonghyun already gave him the answer to that: _You’re you, Taeminnie. Be yourself._

By the time dinner rolls around and it’s time for Taemin to hang up his headphones for the day, Taemin is tired and hungry and they’ve gotten nowhere. Instead of going home, though he leaves the vocal booth behind for the control room, taking one of the chairs an engineer leaves behind. Some producers Taemin has worked with hated it when he sat in on the mixing, but Jonghyun has spent over half his career as an artist doing the same exact thing, so he has no right to say anything to Taemin. And he doesn’t, except to ask his opinion, or counter it with his own. For what seems like forever, a couple of the engineers hang on, until finally the last one filters out and Taemin looks up at the clock to find that it’s already nine somehow. The light never changes in here, but outside the moon has risen and the stars have been stitched into the sky. Jonghyun keeps his eyes on the computer screen, though, so it’s okay if Taemin keeps his on him, just for a while. He spent all day looking at him, but it’s so different on the other side of the glass somehow. He never noticed that Jonghyun had cut himself shaving, this thin scratch across his jaw, or that he smudged ink on the side of his hand, and even now that he’s close enough to read Jonghyun’s shirt, he still can’t figure out what it means in English. He can’t read his expression, either, because Jonghyun is looking right back at him. Taemin got caught.

“Go home, Taeminnie.” After hours and hours of Taemin-ssi this, Taemin-ssi that, Taemin can almost feel his stress melting, and that’s before Jonghyun reaches up to comb his hair out of his eyes, tucking it behind his ear. Taemin let it get too long. “Get some takeout. Sleep.”

“Do I look tired?”

As soon as Taemin says it he’s dying to hear no, because Jonghyun’s eyes have been on him all day and that’s the last thing Taemin wanted him to see, but Jonghyun isn’t about to lie to him.

“Mm.”

“So do you.” Taemin hesitates, staring into Jonghyun’s face, checking for all the signs he might have overlooked. “Are you still sleeping okay?”

All that gets him is another, “Mm.”

By the time Taemin catches up to his hand, he’s already reached up to rub at the circle under Jonghyun’s eye, finger knocking his glasses up, off the bridge of his nose. Jonghyun stills under his touch, watching him one-eyed, then says as he takes it away, “If you don’t believe me, check for yourself.” His smile sends heat lacing through Taemin. “I’d sleep better that way, too. Less, but better.”

They wouldn’t sleep at all, if Taemin had his way. Or maybe that’s all they would do. He could lie there and hold Jonghyun and watch him until he fell asleep first, then drift off himself, safe and warm in Jonghyun’s arms. And then maybe they would wake up hard and jerk each other off, slow and sleepy and—

And Taemin needs to focus. He rubs his hands over his own face, shutting Jonghyun’s smile out, brushing his bangs back far enough he pulls at the roots. They fall back into his eyes the minute he lets go.

“Have you heard back from Director-nim yet?” he says.

They went into recording with four songs to work on, three from Jonghyun’s demos and one hand-picked by Creative, a ballad designed to wring tears out of fans, meant to be stuck at the end of Taemin’s album or played during an encore. They got that one out of the way first. It only took Taemin one day to record, but Jonghyun stayed late all that week to tinker with the arrangement and mix. The next song took them both twice as long, probably because it was Jonghyun’s baby, and one day into this song, Taemin can already see it stretching ahead for weeks and weeks. And the next once could be the same. But after that…nothing. They’ll be out of songs, unless Creative okays the next few they submitted. They must be getting sick of Jonghyun’s demos.

“No news is good news, Taeminnie,” Jonghyun tells him. “Or at least it’s not bad. If it has reached her it’s not a priority, but we’d know already if it had gotten stuck at any other point, they’d have sent it back for revision.”

“They never reject you outright anymore?”

“I know their standards too well for that now. I don’t waste my time submitting things they’ll throw out.”

Jonghyun smirks as he says it, tiniest curl of his mouth, and that’s all the warning Taemin gets before he reaches up and runs one knuckle down the nape of Taemin’s neck, that exact spot that sends sparks shooting down his spine and makes his breathing hitch in his throat. Taemin’s chair screeches against the floor as he scoots away, so loud and obvious that it’s worse than if he stayed put, and he’s still not out of reach, anyway. He tears his eyes away from Jonghyun’s hand, back to resting casually on the control panel, so sexy it makes Taemin weak, but looking at the rest of Jonghyun doesn’t help at all. Good thing Taemin barely has to think for the words to come to him.

“What about your own standards? You fought with them so much so that you could be yourself.”

“It’s been a long time since it was about me.” Four whole years since Jonghyun ended talks with Creative over the comeback that never was, almost five since he started them. Before Taemin can say anything about it, Jonghyun gives him another one of those smiles. “Now it’s about you, and you only deserve the best.”

“I don’t care what SM wants,” Taemin begins, ignoring the way those words flutter around his stomach.

But then Jonghyun cuts him off with, “You don’t care what I do, either.”

“Hyung~” Taemin gives up. Except he doesn’t, because he stays nailed in his seat instead of climbing into Jonghyun’s lap, and finds it in himself to say, “I can’t have two conversations at once. When I say something it only has one meaning. The obvious one.”

It’s so hard to keep meeting Jonghyun’s eyes, dark, unblinking, the kind of stare that makes him forget how to breathe.

“I don’t like being obvious,” Jonghyun says.

“I do.”

All it takes is Jonghyun smirking again and the meaning turns upside down again, and Taemin’s whole day is burning under his skin, all that time he spent playing with Jonghyun, wanting his eyes on him, biting his lip, toying with his hair, letting himself say whatever dumb thing came into his head just so that he could hear Jonghyun’s reply. Even when he dropped the lyric sheet and bent over to snatch it up as it fluttered to the floor, he took his time straightening back up, ass in Jonghyun’s face. And now his hands are twisted up in his lap, old nervous habit Jonghyun would have caught in half a second, and his ears are betraying him, tingling red, and he still hasn’t managed to take his eyes off Jonghyun’s face for one single second. And if Jonghyun asks him to come home with him tonight, he might say yes.

Instead Jonghyun takes mercy on him. “It’s not that I picked them with their preferences in mind, Taemin-ah. By best I meant my best work. The songs I saved for you are all too good for them to turn down.”

“What do you do with the songs for me that don’t turn out?” Taemin says, just trying to keep up.

“Keep them for myself,” Jonghyun replies, so easily. “If they’re about you, they’re about me.”

And now Taemin’s heart is hurting, on top of everything else. “You can use the songs in my folder, hyung.”

“I have your permission~?”

“If they’re really the best, it should be the other way around, you should be keeping them for yourself and giving me the others,” Taemin says. “I can’t sing like you, and your music is your music.”

“And you’re you.” Jonghyun reaches for him again, this time to run his finger down Taemin’s nose. “I told you at the beginning, everything that’s mine is yours.”

And Taemin has been taking advantage of that since before Jonghyun even put it into words. Whenever Jonghyun used to buy him food during their trainee days, he’d give Taemin half his own meal, and whenever they slept over in the practice room, he’d give him his coat for a blanket. He wasn’t hungry. He was too hot. After Taemin learned how sing, Jonghyun started giving him lines in Shinee songs that should have been his, and if he’d tried to tell Taemin he didn’t want to sing them, maybe Taemin would have finally called him on the lie. Instead he took them, and he’s still taking and taking and taking, and he’d take more, Jonghyun’s body, Jonghyun’s heart, everything. He has to be the one to draw the line, because Jonghyun never will.

“I built my sound based on SM, but they have millions of songs, and you’re just one person,” Taemin says. “I’m already using you to tear it down, I can’t use you to build it back up.”

“I told you that night, I like it when you use me,” is Jonghyun’s only reply. Then he gives Taemin yet another smile. “I use you too, all the time.”

Only for things that don’t cost Taemin anything, that’s different. “For inspiration, right?”

“And other things,” Jonghyun adds immediately, because he can’t not. “Now you can feel dirty instead of guilty.” More like hot and flustered and Taemin doesn’t even know what, as Jonghyun pauses to consider him, lip caught between his teeth. Finally he goes on, goes back, “You’ve always tried to pretend that it wasn’t about you, even in Japan you did, but I guess you know me too well.”

What?

“I didn’t mean that song, I meant in general,” Taemin begins, before faltering at the look on Jonghyun’s face.

“How is it so cute when you play dumb? You’re a fox disguised as a bear.”

Taemin’s not playing, he is dumb, but he already told Jonghyun that. “Hyung…”

Jonghyun’s expression just barely flickers, and suddenly he’s back on topic, telling Taemin, “We should have enough to keep recording into next week, at least.” He slumps back in his chair, rolling his head and rotating his shoulders, trying to work out all the kinks from sitting bent over the console all day. It’d be too dangerous to help, put his hands on Jonghyun, dig his fingers into his flesh, so Taemin folds them together in his lap and waits for Jonghyun to finish his thought. “If she doesn’t get back to us by then, we’ll have to try something desperate.”

Or give in and go through them directly again. Jonghyun’s demos speak to Taemin more than anything he found in the vaults that day, but there were a million more songs he didn’t go through, and it’s been so long since he stopped thinking clearly. And anyway, “They’ve already paid for this much studio time, it doesn’t make sense to stretch it out anymore. If they don’t want to release it once we’re done they can just sit on it, like they always do.”

“Have they decided if you’re getting a mini or a full length yet?”

“I’m going to record as many songs as I can before they do,” is the only answer Taemin has for him. “You make sure they’re too good to cut.”

Jonghyun shoots him a look. “You’d have to let me do my job for that.”

“You always said it was cute when I talk back,” Taemin retorts, even though he’s talking back right now and he’s the furthest thing from cute there is.

“That’s what I mean,” Jonghyun says, holding Taemin’s eyes. “You’re way too distracting.”

Taemin should probably be embarrassed. This is the most unprofessional he’s ever been in his entire career from the time he was sixteen, who cares if it’s Jonghyun. But it’s _Jonghyun._

“I can’t distract you, I’m the whole point.”

And Taemin said it. Now he has to sit still while it hits Jonghyun’s face, as his mouth curls and his eyes darken and his breathing hitches, puffing against Taemin’s lips. He tilts his head just so, sending Taemin’s pulse spiking like crazy. All he has to do is lean forward that last inch and fit their mouths together, or sit here and wait those extra few seconds for Jonghyun to do it, like he does everything. Taemin’s toes curl in his shoes at the barest thought, all the things Jonghyun has done to him and the things he would do now if Taemin just let him, slide his tongue in his mouth, tear away Taemin’s clothes until he finds skin, drag him out to his car and take him nice and slow in the backseat, or bend him over the control panel and fuck him so hard he won’t be able to sit on the vocal booth stool for a week. Or just kiss him. Just his lips pressed to Taemin’s, his tongue and his teeth, so soft and hard and hot and wet, everything all at once.

Taemin shuts his eyes and—

“You let me sleep a long time.”

None of the above. Manager hyung. Taemin opens his eyes to find Jonghyun back where he started, five inches away and looking over Taemin’s shoulder. He’s still working on turning around, waiting for his body to go back to doing what it’s supposed to, when Jonghyun says, “Just leave him here next time, hyung. I’ll give him a ride home.”

He stands, stretching. Taemin bullies his muscles into following suit, ignoring Jonghyun’s shirt riding up his stomach, how cute he looks with his face scrunched up like that, all those things he’s not allowed to notice.

But then as soon as Manager hyung turns to him and says, “That reminds me – your schedule tomorrow got changed. You have a photo shoot,” Taemin forgets everything anyway, so frustrated so suddenly he can’t see straight.

“What?”

No, seriously. _What?_

“The company set it up before your comeback got pushed back and then forgot about it, I guess.” Manager hyung shifts his weight, scratching the back of his neck, before adding what all three of them already know, “The departments never talk to each other and we’re always the last to know what’s going on.”

“We had studio time blocked out, though,” shoots out of Taemin’s mouth, but that’s just as obvious and just as useless. There’s no point even talking about it. SM, whatever magazine it is, the photographer, their time all matters more than Taemin’s. Their issue is more important than his album. And who is he to complain, anyway, when they’ll pay him more for it than most people his age make in a year.

He grabs his things, stuffing his arms through the sleeves of his coat and swallowing back the bitter taste rising up in his mouth. Jonghyun does the same silently, following Taemin and Manager hyung out and clicking the control room light off behind them. Taemin wasted all of today for them both, and now suddenly there’s no tomorrow.

“Don’t worry, Taemin-ah. It’s their money. They’ll fill it up with a one-day thing, an OST or something,” Manager hyung says as they set off down the hallway, like Taemin was thinking of anyone but himself.

“They didn’t even tell Jonghyun hyung.”

“Like I said, they got things mixed up,” Manager hyung replies wearily, before Jonghyun can say anything for himself. “Don’t get mad at me, please, Taeminnie. I’m just here to get you where they want you to be.”

Taemin’s not. It’s not at him. It’s at SM. The time he wasted attending meetings all those months ago, the staff who never bothered to tell him they’d set up the shoot when it could still have promoted his comeback, the day he’s now lost to it while his album is still in pieces, all that. And at himself, because somehow not seeing Jonghyun tomorrow hurts more than the rest of it put together.

“I’m sorry, I’m just frustrated. Sorry I’m taking it out on you,” Taemin makes himself say, even though Manager hyung is already shaking his head at him, telling him it’s fine. He has the elevator ride down into the parking garage and the walk back to their cars to work up to saying good night, but somehow it gets harder with every step, heart beating louder than their footfalls echoing across the concrete. When he lets himself glance sideways at Jonghyun, Jonghyun smiles at him again, easy as anything. “Catch up on sleep, hyung.”

“I have everything on my phone, I can work from home for a day.” Jonghyun’s hand brushes against his, accidentally-on purpose. “Call me when you get out.”

Because this is really happening. He’s still so stuck on the day he would have had that it hasn’t sunk in yet.

“I wish they’d warned me, I would have stuck to my diet better. I guess that’s what Photoshop is for~” he says. Jonghyun probably doesn’t want to hear about that, and he probably didn’t find it funny, but Manager hyung smiles tiredly. And now Taemin is left deciding if he wants to know now or find out on set, which is worse, poking and prodding at his fat all night, or dread setting in on the ride over. “Did they say what the concept was?”

Manager hyung gets what he means right away, but he still can’t help. “They never ask about showing skin anymore, so I don’t know.”

Taemin didn’t know back when he agreed to showing it that first time, that he was agreeing to show it every time for the rest of his career. He didn’t know a lot of things back then, though.

“Where is it?”

“Hotel.”

That could mean anything. The lobby isn’t the same as a room, and even then, the bed and the chairs and tables are worlds apart. And even with bed shoots…

“You can tell me about it too when you call,” Jonghyun says as they walk up to where they both parked, Manager hyung’s clunky old van and Jonghyun’s sports car, stupidly sleek and sexy. He grabs Taemin’s arm before he’s even taken one step away from him. “Don’t make me wait like the rest of your fans~”

Who cares about that, when they have to wait a day and a night to see each other again. Taemin is already waiting, even now. But Manager hyung is too, for Taemin to hurry up and say good night so they can both go home finally, and if Taemin closed the distance between them and hugged Jonghyun, he might never leave his arms. So instead he says, “Night, hyung,” and edges past him, between their cars. As he pulls his door open, it sends him half a step back and right up against Jonghyun, so warm and solid at his back, hand coming up to hold Taemin’s hip, righting his balance and sending his whole body hot. In the time it takes for his muscles to work again, Jonghyun leans forward to press his nose into Taemin’s hair, breathing deep. Breathing Taemin in.

He breathes out, “Good night, Taeminnie.”

Taemin’s legs work long enough for him to climb into the car, and Jonghyun’s warmth lingers for so much longer. It carries him back home, fogs up the bathroom mirror before he can look in it, caresses him in the shower, curls up with him in bed, and follows him into his dream.

When he wakes up to his alarm screaming, pre-dawn light filtering in through the blinds, he can’t remember it.

The hotel in question turns out to be a luxury high rise in the heart of Gangnam. Taemin has been to hundreds of them over the years for photo shoots just like this. He forgets the name as soon as they pass into the lobby, sun rising at their backs, Taemin’s nerves jittering with every step they take towards the elevators. Half the crew is waiting for them there, along with the stylists SM sent ahead. It takes three separate rides to bring him and Manager hyung and all of them up to the set, crammed in together as the floors tick up, and flattened against the wall, Taemin has this crazy thought that he’ll end up skinny enough if he stays just like this. When they step out into the hallway and down to the room they reserved, he still hasn’t figured out how to breathe. They were ten minutes early and the PD is just barely on time, striding in while Taemin is in hair and makeup. He hasn’t seen any of the coordi noonas in what feels like ten million years, but it’s like no time has passed since the last time they had him at their mercy.

They still know what’s going on better than he does, too. Taemin thinks his stomach might come out his mouth when he opens it to talk, but somehow he manages to ask, “Have they said what they want me to do?”

“Lie on the bed,” one of the noonas tells him as she teases his hair with a comb. “They talked around the concept, but basically, afternoon delight.”

Oh.

“Before or after?”

The noona working on his face catches his expression in half a second, reassuring him, “Before. Did you really think they’d get away with doing after, Taemin-ah?”

Maybe they would’ve let him wrap himself up in a sheet? It’s been twenty years and Taemin still doesn’t know how these things work, and for every photo shoot he’s done, the line has always shifted. Things that were suggestive to one photographer were too raunchy for another, things that were conservative for some magazines were daring for others, the same way Taemin’s image used to slide from erotic to innocent depending on who was looking at him. Back when people still did.

But Taemin doesn’t need to worry about that right now. Any of it. “As long as they let me wear a shirt.”

The noona hesitates, makeup brush tickling Taemin’s cheek. “Unbuttoned, they said.”

Which means it might come off. Taemin has never worked with this guy before, so who knows.

“At least I haven’t hopped out of the shower~”

As the coordi noonas’ laughter dies their focus narrows again, tilting Taemin’s head this way and that, and somewhere in the middle Manager hyung comes to collect his phone. It’s just so he won’t forget it somewhere, a system the two of them set up long long ago, but it’s never been this hard to give it up before. It stayed silent all last night and the whole way over to the shoot, and Jonghyun probably won’t be up for hours, anyway. And Taemin has no excuse to talk to him until this is over. Like that’s all his album is, just an excuse, and not the single most important thing in his life right now. What is wrong with him lately? He used to be so much better at this.

This, meaning all the parts of his life that aren’t Jonghyun. Except for photo shoots. Even the ones he knew to diet for have all been bad. Part of him wants to sit here in front of the mirror forever, but he has to get through this day somehow to get back to Jonghyun—to his album, and once the noona working on his face finishes and steps aside, she stops blocking his view. He doesn’t need to look at himself to know she’s made him up perfectly, same as always, but he’s grown so used to seeing himself bare faced that his reflection takes him by surprise, even when she told him she was going for minimal and natural. Maybe he should learn to do makeup himself, but maybe he’d hate mirrors even more after standing in front of one every morning, figuring out how to hide his worst points. It's hard enough to find all his best angles, what kinds of faces to make as the camera stares at him and the photographer keeps reminding him of basic things like, "Relax, Taemin-ssi." He just has to lie here and keep his head blank, he knows that from years and years of experience, but he can’t squash the butterflies in his stomach, even when he turns over onto it. Instead of hiding his face in his arms, he gives the camera his best fuck-me look. Not his best, just a fake. If the camera were Jonghyun looking back, or if those were Jonghyun’s hands toying with the hem of his shirt instead of his own…

“Good, Taemin-ssi. More of that. Teasing. Playful.”

That’s the last thing Jonghyun would say if he were here to see. Taemin has teased him for weeks straight. He’s seen Taemin do every obvious thing already, it probably wouldn’t do anything for him at this point to see him run his fingers through his own hair, bite his lip, make eyes at him. But the fact that Taemin is on a bed might do him in anyway, turning his head in his arms to shoot him secret looks, the nape of his neck and the curve of his spine, his ass. Basics.

“Variety, Taemin-ssi!”

Yeah, it doesn’t have to be that position. Jonghyun wouldn’t like it if he muffled his cries in the blanket, and he likes to watch his face, and Taemin really needs to stop thinking of Jonghyun fucking him. He needs to go back to safe things like what he’ll eat once he allows himself to again, how he can make this end faster, where they’ll pick up tomorrow with his album, or he’ll show the photographer things only Jonghyun is allowed to see. Taemin rolls onto his side, angling his head to show off the line of his neck, the curve of his hips, shirt gaping open and nipple peeking out. On his back, legs spread, hands twisted in the sheets, hair spilling out over the pillow. Pushing himself upright, eyes half-closed, pressing his fingers to his lips, too pretty to be a real yawn. He climbs onto his knees next, sitting back with his legs splayed, parting his lips, peering up at the camera. He should stop thinking of Jonghyun and start thinking of what a woman would want to see, but the photographer is okay with everything, each tiny movement punctuated with another click and flash of light, burning spots into Taemin’s vision. Whenever he blinks he sees Jonghyun so clearly he can almost taste and touch and feel him, and when he’s told to lay back and close his eyes, he can’t help giving himself over to him. Jonghyun's sleeping face from that morning, his smile when he woke up and caught Taemin staring, the way he nestled closer for a kiss, so much sweeter for all the marks and bruises he’d left on Taemin’s body the night before. That was in his own bed, though. In a hotel like this, in the middle of a day, everything would be different. Dirtier. Faster and harder, rushed and desperate, even as Jonghyun’s hands and mouth and dick broke Taemin’s will and made him stay long, long after they should have left.

The camera clicks again and Taemin’s eyes snap open and reality comes rushing back in, bright and loud, picking up speed. Blurring.

“Did you really fall asleep, Taemin-ah?” Manager hyung says hours and hours later, when Taemin is back in his hoodie and sweatpants they’re on their way out.

Is that what it looked like? Taemin is too afraid to even ask, but that’s always been his problem. “Phone, hyung.”

“Ah.”

Manager hyung hands it to him as the elevator doors close and their reflections stare back at them, stretched thin and tinted gold like time and money. His phone was so heavy when he handed it over this morning, but it’s so light now in his hand, buzzing back to life. His fingers tighten around it as it catches up on everything that happened while it was off, notification after notification, each one jolting his heart. Jonghyun won’t have texted him, he knows better than anyone how photo shoots go, and he might not even be waiting for his call yet, because his phone tells him it’s not even three somehow. They abandoned using natural lighting and blacked out the windows thirty minutes in to the shoot, but somehow the sun will still be out when they step outside. Usually it would take hours and hours more, photographers yelling instructions, coordi noonas touching him up every five seconds, the crew beckoning him over to check the photos and see for himself where he’d gone wrong. It’s just as well. Today he would’ve been too scared to look.

The important point should be that it’s too late for lunch and too early for dinner and he’ll just have to stick with calling, but with this much daylight left to burn, maybe Jonghyun will want to meet to discuss. The studio is out, but Jonghyun’s phone is good enough for most things, anyway. If not, Jonghyun’s computer. His home studio.

What if his mom is there?

What if she is? What is Taemin thinking? Why is he even trying to lie to himself about something this important, why does he keep lying and lying and lying when he knows better. His heart rate shouldn’t be tripling as they head for the doors, the same way it did as they approached the elevators this morning, and he barely makes it out into the open air when everything inside him stops. His body carries on without him, down the block, towards the parking garage, out of the hotel’s shadow, weaving through the crowds of people who are too busy and important to look at him twice. He knows exactly what he’s doing when he reaches for Manager hyung, but somehow it still takes him by surprise, somehow his breath comes shorter and shorter as he pulls Manager hyung aside, to the edge of the sidewalk, but now Taemin has to answer the question he put on his face.

“You can go on, hyung.”

“What?”

What is right. What the fuck is Taemin _doing._

The answer is too obvious for him to hide from, but the lie takes so much longer, endless paralyzing seconds of silence while people and cars pass them by. Then, finally, “I said I’d meet Jonginnie around here for dinner.”

But somehow Manager hyung is tilting his head at him like the words just bounced right off him. “Jonginnie, really?”

And now suddenly Taemin’s heart hurts, on top of everything else.

“Is it really that weird?” They used to eat together practically every other day. Manager hyung’s face tells him yes, but before Taemin can stop himself, he’s looking for no. “Has it gotten that bad? You asked me once if we were dating, remember?”

Manager hyung glances around on instinct, checking to see if anyone heard that word, before he turns back to Taemin, smiling faintly. He knows as well as Taemin that was years and years ago.

“Not bad, Taemin-ah. Normal.” He hesitates, and if he were anyone else, he’d be wondering why he has to explain adulthood to someone who’s in their thirties. But he’s Manager hyung, and he’s just trying to soften the blow. “Friendships change as you get older. I never understood any of my friends who went first until I got married myself. It’s just harder to get together, and you go longer between seeing each other. Life slows down.”

“He’s just dating her, hyung.”

It just shoots out of Taemin’s mouth, but he can’t take it back, he has to let Manager hyung tell him almost gently, “With the thought of marrying.”

Taemin wishes that could mean something to him. Just this once, he wishes he knew for himself what that felt like. If his own feelings would be the same as now.

“I have to go,” he says. Lies again. He doesn’t have to do anything, least of all this. “Say hello to hyungsunim for me.”

He watches Manager hyung until he’s halfway down the block, but then Manager hyung turns back to look at him, and Taemin starts walking, legs like marshmallows, heart hammering in his chest, until the next time he glances back and Manager hyung is nowhere to be seen. He's pretty sure he's shaking as he returns to the hotel, and the relief from stepping out of the sun again just makes it all worse. Shakier. Somehow he makes it up to reception, and somehow he remembered his wallet this morning. Whenever he went to a hotel with one of his boyfriends, it was never this nice, it was always a means to an end. He’s never dated a younger guy but he’s dated ones with a lot less money, so sometimes he’d go in first and pay and wait in the room for them to come up, just like this. And sometimes he’d sit in the car and wait for a text like the one he’s about to send Jonghyun. If his fingers could work long enough to type four numbers, at least. He gives himself as long as he needs after the door to the room snicks shut behind him, checking the bathroom and the bed, even though he already knows what he’ll find. The pillows are just as soft as the ones three floors down, the sheets just as silky, the mattress just as firm, the shower is just as nice, and the refrigerator in the corner is just as well-stocked with alcohol. Only the view is different, so high up everything below looks like toys and life, like a game. Except somehow this is the most real Taemin has felt all day, stuck inside his body with his heart in his throat and his fingers trembling, his phone staring at him, silent, accusing.

He shouldn’t be here. He should be in the van with Manager hyung, dialing Jonghyun’s number and telling him things anyone could hear. _I got out. You said to call, hyung. You better have something to say by now~_

Just four numbers. That’s all.

_1004_

And now…send.

Taemin barely makes it back to the bed before his feelings take over. The wait for the reply lasts longer than the entire photo shoot. Jonghyun won’t get it. He could have walked right in with all his girlfriends and gone up together, maybe made out in the elevator if no one was around. Or maybe he won’t get it because he won’t want to, because after weeks it’s his turn to play with Taemin. Or maybe he’ll get it, and when Taemin checks his phone after it buzzes in his hand, it’ll still be about his album. They can’t both keep saying and doing all the wrong things. Taemin squeezes his eyes shut so tight it hurts, then makes himself look.

_address, taeminnie_

Taemin gives it to him.

After that, all Taemin has left to do is…nothing. Except wait. And prepare somehow. When he got up this morning he dressed for a photo shoot, not for Jonghyun’s eyes, ratty sweatpants and an old hoodie it would be easy for him to change in and out of. He should have walked off wearing something from the set, Manager hyung would’ve believed him later if he’d lied and told him he forgot and asked him to return it. Whatever, Jonghyun has seen him like this a million times at the end of millions of days they’ve spent together, and somehow he still wants to fuck him.

Which, Jonghyun is going to fuck him. Probably on the bed first? Or maybe on the floor if they don’t make it that far, or up against the wall, maybe he’ll take Taemin in his arms as the door swings shut behind them. Or maybe not, maybe they’ll just sit on the bed and watch TV until Taemin gets desperate and buries his face in Jonghyun’s crotch and Jonghyun says, _I thought you asked hyung up here to seduce me. Is this it~?_ and oh God, why is he thinking so much. He was sure he’d stopped the minute he texted Jonghyun, this isn’t fair.

Taemin has to go back to the things he can control, starting with figuring out how the shower works and washing today from his skin. He leaves his clothes in a trail towards the bathroom, feeling more naked than he ever has on his own, but he only gets as far as the bathroom mirror before he stops. He was expecting raccoon eyes and smudged makeup, but the coordi noonas touched him up what felt like every other minute, and it’s just as perfect now as it was when he first saw himself this morning, mascara and eye shadow and pink lip gloss. He can still find every flaw and blemish from years of knowing exactly where to look, but what would Jonghyun see? Even bare faced, Jonghyun calls him beautiful. Like this…

Among the ten million lotions the hotel has laid out on the counter, it’s not hard to find something to use as lube. He squirts too much into his palm, rubbing his hands together until his fingers slip against each other. There’s no point in pretending anymore that they’re Jonghyun’s when he knows how they feel now, so much thicker and stronger than his own, but he’s only doing this so that Jonghyun won’t have to later. So that Taemin won’t have to wait another second longer for Jonghyun to sink into him. His stomach tightens in anticipation as he reaches back, breathing sharpening once he finds his hole. He doesn’t play with himself, doesn’t tease, doesn’t do any of the things that would go straight to his dick, just slicks himself up, working lube inside and going back for more, until the burn fades and he’s wet enough that his fingers glide in and out, in and out, inandoutinandout—

There’s a knock on the door.

_Hyung._

Taemin is halfway out of the room before he remembers that he’s naked and snatches one of the fluffy white robes hanging next to the tub. There’s no time to think about how it looks until he’s tied the belt tight and jerked the door open, and finds Jonghyun standing on the other side, dressed in jeans and a button down shirt, looking so normal it makes him second-guess every single last decision he’s made in his entire life. Dumbly, he stands aside and lets Jonghyun in, and then dies again as he toes out of his shoes and follows the trail of Taemin’s clothes into the room.

“Do you want something to drink?” Taemin blurts out.

Instead of telling Taemin that he’s acting like a bad cliché from an adultery drama, Jonghyun smiles like he can’t help it and tells him, “They bill you for that, Taemin-ah. It doesn’t come with the room.”

Taemin can do this part, he’s been doing it for so many years, he knows what he’s supposed to say. “I have more money than you.”

Jonghyun laughs and walks over to the couch by the window, dropping onto it, undoing the first couple buttons of his shirt, and for one second the only thought in Taemin’s head is climbing into his lap and licking the mole beneath his collar bones. Jonghyun watches him think about it, smile fading into the tiniest curve of his lips, then watches some more once Taemin retreats to the opposite corner to dig through the wine refrigerator and pretends he can still read the labels on the bottles. Even if he could, he wouldn’t be able to understand what any of it means, he’s not Kibum. He climbs to his feet finally, Jonghyun’s eyes pulling him back across the room, blacker than black, until they’re right there, staring up at him. Clumsily, he sets the bottle down on the little end table next to Jonghyun before he does something crazy like drop it. Drinking it is crazy enough. Which, they need glasses. Where…?

Jonghyun reaches for his wrist before he can take one step back towards the kitchenette, drawing him in to stand in front of him. Taemin comes obediently, helpless to resist, muscles turning to mush the closer he gets. If Jonghyun stares at him any longer with those eyes he’s going to melt into a puddle on the floor, but there’s nothing else stopping Taemin from sitting on him, kissing him breathless, pulling at his shirt until all the buttons pop off.

“Did you get anything done today?” Taemin is babbling, anything to fill this silence. “You said to call but I got out early. I thought maybe you’d still be in bed when I—”

Jonghyun reaches up to tug the belt of his robe loose. It’s so heavy it slips down off his shoulders as it opens, then pools at his feet, and before Taemin can even catch up, he’s naked. The daylight streams in through the windows, leaving him nowhere left to hide, and if he looked past Jonghyun, the world outside this room might look back at him, but his eyes never leave Jonghyun’s face. It’s okay if Jonghyun doesn’t meet them, it’s okay if he’s too busy with every other part of Taemin that Taemin is dying to cover up, his thighs and stomach, his nipples and his navel and his dick, half-hard in the cool air. Stretch marks and scars and moles, too soft all over, no definition. Jonghyun has already fucked him how many times now, and how many of those with the lights on. He’s already seen everything and he wants it. Taemin is going to give it to him.

“How long did I keep you waiting?” Jonghyun asks finally. “Traffic was terrible.”

“I don’t know,” Taemin says.

His breath catches in his throat as Jonghyun reaches for him finally, hands coming up to hold his hips, so warm and big and firm against his skin, keeping him in place. He has to curl his own into fists to keep them at his side, when all he wants to do is thread his fingers through Jonghyun’s hair, clench them in the fabric of Jonghyun’s shirt, just hang onto him somehow.

Jonghyun’s eyes return to his face finally, so dark Taemin could fall into them. “Did you touch yourself?”

Taemin’s stomach flips over, body rushing hot and cold all at the same time. “Was I not supposed to?”

“You tell me.”

Jonghyun’s hands slide back to squeeze Taemin’s ass, and maybe Taemin breaks. “I didn’t come. I just prepped myself for you.”

“You say that like you think you were being good.” The curl of Jonghyun’s mouth makes Taemin’s legs so weak he can barely stand. “I spent the whole drive over thinking about what you must be doing without me. If you’d undress yourself, if you’d shower and use the hotel shampoo, if I’d find you with your hand already between your legs. You kept me waiting for a month.”

“Next time I’ll let you do everything.”

“You’ll let me now.”

For one second all Taemin can see is Jonghyun’s eyes staring into his, and then all of the sudden Jonghyun is pulling him close, pushing him down, putting Taemin’s body right where he wants it. His touch tells Taemin who he belongs to, but not what to feel or how to breathe, bent over Jonghyun’s lap with his ass in the air, balancing on his tip toes, face buried in the couch cushions, Jonghyun’s hand heavy and firm on the small of his back.

“Anything, hyung,” comes out of him. “Whatever you want, I want it too.”

Jonghyun rubs his hand over Taemin’s ass, big and broad and hot, so gentle it makes Taemin crazy. Even more when he takes it away and asks Taemin like he didn’t just tell him, “What do you want?”

His palm comes down on Taemin’s ass, slap that leaves Taemin’s skin stinging.

“Harder,” Taemin just barely gets out, before Jonghyun strikes him again, hard enough to knock the breath out of Taemin’s body, along with, “Please, hyung, please. Make it hurt.”

Again. Again. Jonghyun’s breathing is so light and even it makes Taemin’s toes curl, his whole body tense up, before the smack of skin-on-skin sets Taemin’s face on fire, pain-pleasure-pain, the force of each blow leaving his ass jiggling and driving his hips into Jonghyun’s thigh, harsh hot friction that has Taemin so hard it aches. Jonghyun’s hand comes down again and again, again again again, until he’s sobbing for air, clawing at the couch cushions, helpless to bite back his gasps and moans and whimpers. The only word left he knows is, “Hyung,” right up until the moment Jonghyun runs his fingers feather light up the crack of Taemin’s ass, trailing fire across his skin, forcing, “PD-nim,” out of him.

Jonghyun hits him so hard he sees stars. When he returns to his body, Jonghyun barely gives him a second before his hand comes down again, this time to rub it better, palm so hot and rough against Taemin’s smarting skin that being gentle just makes it hurt more. Makes Taemin burn hotter. “Was that too hard? Taeminnie?”

His other hand slides down from the small of Taemin’s back, too, smoothing over his skin until tip of his finger meets the cleft of Taemin’s ass, slipping in the lube Taemin slicked himself up with. Taemin moans, scrabbling for purchase as his legs go weak, dick soaking Jonghyun’s pants with precome. He can feel Jonghyun’s pressing into his stomach, big and thick and hard and _fuck._

“I thought you would hate this kind of thing, I thought you’d hate me if I asked for it,” Taemin says somehow.

“You ask for it all the time.” Jonghyun spanks him again, sharp stinging slap across one cheek. “All day, that’s all you ever do.” And again, across the other, and Taemin can’t keep back his moan, even as Jonghyun tells him, “Don’t even try to deny it,” like he even could with his ass in the air, beat red probably, thighs quivering with need.

“I thought you would do something about it.”

“I thought I would too, you made me so crazy.” This time it lands between the cheeks, right over his hole. Taemin whites out for a second. “Tell me if I’m hurting you. You will, right?”

Somehow Taemin’s voice is saying, “That’s the point, hyung.”

“Should I stop?”

Taemin’s whole body tightens up, waiting waiting waiting, ass so oversensitive even the air feels like too much, pain building and building without Jonghyun’s hand coming down to burn it away, send him out of his body, to the moon. His hair is in his face and he’s drooling into the couch and his vision is blurred with tears, his feet are slipping on the wood floor, world falling away from him, and he could die if Jonghyun doesn’t touch him again.

_“Please.”_

Jonghyun gives him what he needs everywhere he needs it, his ass and his thighs and his hole, over and over and over, until Taemin’s cries are louder than the smack of flesh, and still, Jonghyun is telling him, “Don’t try to keep it in. I need to know, baby, let me hear you. That’s the only way I can do this to you.”

Somehow Taemin is still talking back, too. “Don’t lie, you like it too. Your dick feels so big.” And with each breath Taemin takes, it feels bigger.

Taemin tenses up for Jonghyun’s hand, but he gets Jonghyun’s finger instead, sliding right into the mess Taemin made for him, so much thicker inside him than his own were, leaving him full and empty and sobbing into the couch while Jonghyun fucks him with it, slick and wet and filthier in Taemin’s ears than the sound of their skin meeting. Jonghyun’s voice sounds like salvation. “Do you want it?”

“Always.”

Taemin slides off Jonghyun’s lap clumsily. Jonghyun’s hands are the only thing keeping him from spilling in a puddle at his feet, taking his weight until Taemin is on his knees in front of him, where he belongs. Almost. All that’s left is to lean forward, spreading Jonghyun’s legs open wide enough to bury his face in his crotch. Jonghyun’s breathing hisses, but Taemin forgot how to even do that the minute he felt it again, straining in Jonghyun’s pants, big and thick and hard, all for him. He wants it inside him, his mouth and his ass and his hand, all over his body. All over his face works too. He rubs his cheek against the outline of it, mouthing at it, kissing and licking, fabric so dull on his tongue when he’s frantic for Jonghyun’s taste, and he thinks he might be moaning, he thinks that’s him, low and broken and desperate. Then Jonghyun’s hand is on him again, fingers knotting into his hair, tugging him away. Taemin should be resisting, making him yank, but instead he tips his head back obediently, and just like that, all he can see is Jonghyun’s face. Cheeks flushed, lip caught between his teeth, eyes black, and somehow they haven’t even kissed yet and Taemin is all the way down here.

The sound of Jonghyun’s zipper hits Taemin harder than Jonghyun’s hand ever did. His eyes drop back down to find Jonghyun getting his dick out, thick and flush with blood, head poking out Jonghyun’s fist, dripping precome Taemin wants to catch on his tongue. Jonghyun’s fingers wind tighter in his hair as Taemin tests his hold, almost blind with desperation, before he pushes Taemin’s head forward, so close he can almost taste it.

“You want it.” It’s not a question this time. “It’s not a want, though, it’s a need. How did you live without me, baby? I told you already, I can’t. I didn’t. I got up and ate and slept and worked, and thought only of you.”

_Hyung._

Taemin shuts his eyes and opens his mouth wide, listening for the catch in Jonghyun’s breath, waiting his grip to tighten in his hair, for his dick to fuck right into his mouth, but it slides over his cheek instead, so hot against his skin when he’s burning up already, smearing precome across it. Then his chin, his nose, his philtrum, his top lip, his other cheek, weird and wrong, all these parts of Taemin that can’t be fucked, Jonghyun’s hand pushing his head this way and that, ruining his makeup and leaving him feeling so dirty he can barely breathe. He can feel Jonghyun’s eyes on him before he looks up, so dark Taemin might fall into them as he leans forward again. His mouth catches on Jonghyun’s wristwatch, cold and metallic and hot under his skin, dragging across Jonghyun’s fist as he draws back, over Jonghyun’s dick, until finally, finally, the head bumps up against his lips, smearing his gloss. Taemin kisses it, soft and slow and sweet, before opening his mouth on it, running the point of his tongue down the slit, light and teasing, until he hears Jonghyun moan. Then he flattens it over the head, closing his lips around it and suckling at it, helpless to hold back his own whine as Jonghyun’s taste fills his mouth.

“Fuck, Taeminnie, so good,” Jonghyun is saying as his hand pushes Taemin’s head forward, dick filling him up slow and sure, thick and heavy on his tongue. “So pretty for me.”

Taemin strains against his grip to take him deeper, stretching his lips around him and relaxing his jaw, breathing through his nose once he remembers how to breathe at all. Back before he made himself date, his biggest fantasy was teaching himself how to do this on Jonghyun’s body, watching porn in slow motion to figure out what to do, then coming in five seconds imagining it. But maybe it’s better this way, maybe all those years of other men were worth it, because it’s instinct now telling him how to make Jonghyun’s thighs tremble, how to make him gasp and moan, pull his hair and fuck up into his mouth, and all he has to do is roll his tongue over the skin just beneath the head, and Jonghyun goes from holding him back to hanging onto him helplessly. Taemin reaches up to wrap his fingers around the base, building up a rhythm with his hand and mouth, twisting his wrist and dragging his tongue down the underside, taking Jonghyun in until his lips meet his fist, then pulling back off to suckle at the head again, wet and messy, full and empty and full again, faster, wetter, sloppier, moaning around it.

“Taeminnie,” Jonghyun groans as Taemin swirls his tongue over the head. “Taeminnie, please.” Please what? His fingers tighten in Taemin’s hair as he pulls off to lick and kiss down his length, smudging lip gloss over it as he drags his mouth back up to the tip, wet and open. “I have to last for you, Taeminnie, I can’t if you—“ Taemin takes him in again, fucking his mouth onto it, filling himself to bursting, until finally his lips are stretched around the base and Jonghyun’s dick bumps against the back of his throat. “Where do you want me to come?”

Everywhere. Taemin moans helplessly, voice breaking on Jonghyun’s dick, tightening his lips around him, sucking on him even as Jonghyun pulls him off, but as soon as he’s fallen back and there’s air in his lungs and room for a single thought in his head, it’s that Jonghyun knew his body better than he did. It’s been a whole month.

As he struggles to his feet, Jonghyun’s hands are there again, helping him up, taking his weight, drawing him down to straddle his lap, and he’s so warm and solid beneath Taemin that he could cry. His dick rubs wetly against Taemin’s ass, still so sensitive his nails sink into Jonghyun’s shoulders at the feel of it. Taemin reaches back blindly, closing his fingers around it as he rises to his knees, trying to line it up. The head catches on his hole, slippery with precome and Taemin’s own spit. It’s okay if Taemin’s muscles give out at the tip pressing inside him, lube easing the way as he sits on Jonghyun’s dick, one long slide inside him that splits him in half and has him clawing at Jonghyun, biting down on his neck, cry lost in his skin. Each new breath feels impossible, endless, and that’s before Jonghyun takes his face in his hands and raises his chin, so big and warm holding him together. All Taemin has to do is open his eyes and Jonghyun is right there, so beautiful from this close up that his heart stops. He barely knows what he’s doing before he’s leaned in and fit their mouths together. It’s been a month since their last kiss, too, but as soon as Jonghyun’s lips move against his, it’s like no time has passed at all. Taemin opens his mouth for his tongue, letting him taste himself, swallowing his groan as he rocks his hips, trying to take Jonghyun deeper somehow when it feels like he’ll poke out his stomach. His own dick is so hard it hurts, trapped between their bodies as Taemin presses closer, rubbing up against Jonghyun’s shirt with each breath they don’t take, cotton so rough against his skin it lights fires all over his body.

He’d rather die than break their kiss, but if he doesn’t move Jonghyun might. He has to hang onto him tight enough to hurt as he works himself up his dick, and then his teeth sink into Jonghyun’s bottom lip as he lets it fill him again. Even through the heat rising inside him, his heart pangs, and he tries licking it better, tries smoothing his hands over his shoulders and curling his fingers into his shirt instead as he moves on him. It takes so much to build up a rhythm with Jonghyun making him so weak, his dark dark eyes, his hands on his naked body, his mouth so hot and wet on his neck, but Taemin can start slow. Slow is good. Lifting himself up is torture, but he’d do anything just to feel Jonghyun splitting him open again, big and thick and hard, hitting that spot every time like he was made just for him. All of Jonghyun was, not just his dick. Taemin watches his face twist as he rides him, listening for every hitch in Jonghyun’s breathing, every tiny noise he fucks out of him, every last sign Jonghyun wants him, until Jonghyun slides his hands down over his ass, stroking and squeezing where he’d hit him, and everything else burns away.

“Call me PD-nim again,” Jonghyun demands, of all things. He would.

“Then you call me Taemin-ssi.”

Jonghyun slaps his ass. It’s nothing compared to before, echo of pain-pleasure that shoots like lightning up Taemin’s spine. It’s everything.

“PD-nim~” he pants, high and breathy, just so that Jonghyun will hit him again. Instead he slides his hand down to find the rim of Taemin’s hole, stretched around his dick. Just one finger, one touch, and it sends Taemin’s whole body white hot, melting his muscles and leaving him frantic. He works his hips faster, bouncing on Jonghyun’s dick, face on fire as he fucks himself into saying, “You’re so big, PD-nim.” If Jonghyun laughs at him Taemin won’t even die, how could he with Jonghyun’s teeth sinking into his neck and his dick hitting that spot again and again and again, but then Jonghyun’s grip on his ass tightens, fingers biting into his flesh, holding him in place while he fucks up into him. Taemin sees white. “Please, PD-nim. Harder. I need it. PD-nim. PD-nim! I’ll be good for you, I’ll be so good, just give it to me.”

Lips still mashed against his neck, Jonghyun says, “I like it when you’re bad,” each word hot and wet against his skin. Taemin winds his fingers into his hair, yanking his head back so that their eyes meet.

“That means being good is being bad,” Taemin gets out, staring down at him as he takes his dick, takes it and takes it and takes it. “You don’t like this?”

It almost kills him to keep his hips still, holding Jonghyun’s eyes, willing him to beg, but he only lasts until Jonghyun fucks up into him again, and then he goes to pieces. He yanks at Jonghyun’s hair a second time, desperate to have his mouth back on his, his tongue fucking into him, but he’s helpless to stop him from licking and biting and kissing his way down his chest until he closes his lips around his nipple. Taemin cradles Jonghyun’s head in his arms as he takes it into his mouth, shaky and breathless and burning at both ends, so far gone he can barely remember his own name, no shame left.

“PD-nim,” fucking and fucking and fucking himself on Jonghyun’s dick, “PD-nim,” pushing his ass into his hands as his grip grows tight enough to bruise, rough and possessive, “PD-nim,” arching into Jonghyun’s mouth as he rolls his tongue over his nipple, suckling it, teeth just barely grazing over it, wrenching a cry out of Taemin. “PD-nim!”

Finally Jonghyun holds him in place on his lap, thrusting up into him, force of it shaking the couch beneath them. Taemin sneaks his hand down between their bodies, wrapping his fingers around himself. After going so long without a touch, the feel of his hand is so good he can barely take it, and that’s before Jonghyun catches on, one hand coming down over his, big and warm and tight and relentless, jerking him off. With each pull Taemin rewards him senselessly, “PD-nim. PD-nim. PD-nim,” until he does this thing with his tongue and twists his wrist and hits that spot inside him and, “Hyung.”

Taemin shoots between them, wet and messy, all over Jonghyun’s hand and his shirt, hole tightening around Jonghyun’s dick. One more thrust, so deep Taemin sees stars, and Jonghyun follows him with a shout.

When Taemin comes back to himself, the sun is shining and the world is turning and he’s sitting in Jonghyun’s lap, Jonghyun’s dick softening inside him, Jonghyun’s hands on him, smoothing over his naked skin. Taemin has to sneak his hand into his collar to find any himself, which is a problem they’re going to have to fix. The first thing is learning how to walk again. Which means the first thing is kissing that smile off Jonghyun’s face. After twenty years, it’s one he’s never seen before, so soft and sweet and shy the only thing saving Taemin is that he long since fell in love.

Dark is falling when Taemin makes himself check his phone finally. Five new messages, all from people he’d rather die than read while he’s lying naked in bed with his thighs slick with come, including his mom and his brother and Jongin. Nothing from Creative or Manager hyung or anything he needs to answer. In all the time they’ve stolen, somehow nothing has happened in the real world.

The sheets rustle as Jonghyun nestles in behind him, warm and close. “Are you bored?” When Taemin shakes his head, Jonghyun presses his lips to his shoulder, hand spanning the small of his back. Just fifteen minutes back he pulled out and came all over it, after promising Taemin he still had more to give him, that there would be a next time. There had already been three of those, once in the shower, once after Jonghyun ordered room service and Taemin sucked him off again and filled up on his come instead, and that last time on the bed finally. Jonghyun kisses his skin again. “You’d rather play with your phone than with me?”

More like Taemin can’t get it up again and neither can he. Jonghyun slides his hand down over his ass, one fingertip pressed to his hole, wet and used and fucked open, leaving him feeling so empty suddenly. Taemin sets his phone aside and rolls over so that they’re face-to-face again. He’s seen Jonghyun from this close up so many times in his life, but when he smiles and Jonghyun smiles back, his heart still skips a beat.

“I wish we were like girls. Then we could come a million times,” Taemin says.

“Have you ever been with one?”

That has to be a joke. “Have you~?”

Jonghyun slips his hand back up Taemin’s side, trailing his fingers up and down his skin, dark eyes fixed on Taemin’s face.

“It’s been ten years since we lived together and you’ve never told me that kind of thing. How could I know everyone you’ve had sex with?”

He knows Taemin is gay, though, and that he figured out he liked guys way before he lost his virginity. Jonghyun knows exactly when that was, too. Even if he didn’t tell him where he went at night, Taemin never lied to him about it up till then, which was the worst mistake he could have made. Jonghyun knew every single one of his tells. Taemin knew every single one of his, too, and maybe that was what hurt the most. That it barely hurt Jonghyun at all.

But that was then and this is right now, and Jonghyun’s hand is wandering over his naked body, big and warm and knowing, and Taemin can make him hard just by breathing. It takes so little from him to admit, “You’ve met all of them. You’re the first one who’s not my boyfriend.”

Jonghyun takes that in, and says back, “So I am one of your firsts.” _Am I any of yours?_ Taemin bites it back, since he already knows the answer: no. He lets Jonghyun lean in and kiss it away, soft and slow and lingering, tongue touching to Taemin’s, before he draws one breath away to murmur, “Play a game with me.” When Taemin nips at his bottom lip, he smiles. “We can take turns asking each other things.”

“We already know everything about each other, though.”

“Not everything, as we just established,” Jonghyun counters, pulling away to look Taemin in the eyes again. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want.”

Does he think Taemin is Minho or something? He’s never fallen for that kind of stuff. Except when he lets himself. “No punishment?”

“That’s no fun, is it? You decide on something.” Jonghyun’s smile shows teeth. “Whatever Taeminnie wants~”

“Ttakbam?”

“I didn’t realize that I was in bed with Jinki hyung.”

“I can get him to do it to you later,” Taemin says, reaching up to press his thumb into the corner of Jonghyun’s mouth, crooking it back up. “He won’t even ask why.”

Jonghyun’s hand slips down to pinch his ass, still so sensitive from earlier that pain-pleasure shatters under Taemin’s skin, dragging this low broken moan out of him, and he has to tangle his fingers in Jonghyun’s hair and hang on.

“Later doesn’t count. Something you can do to me now.” Jonghyun slides his hand down further, palm so broad and rough, until his fingertip is pressed to Taemin’s hole again. “Or that I can do to you.”

Taemin arches back into Jonghyun’s touch, working himself onto his finger, hole so slick with lube and come that the tip just slips inside. Taemin clenches down on it, desperate to be filled all of the sudden, if not Jonghyun’s dick, then Jonghyun’s fingers in his ass, his tongue in his mouth. Taemin nestles closer, but their lips have barely pressed together when Jonghyun pulls back. Taemin tugs him back by his hair, ready to beg for even this much. “Kiss me.”

Jonghyun smiles, lips brushing Taemin’s with each word. “Wherever we tell each other to. Let’s do that. I already asked about girls, so you can go first.”

Then he lifts away, takes his hand away, and for one second the only question Taemin can think of is, _What’s the fastest way for me to get you hard?_ But maybe waiting is its own pleasure, maybe his emptiness now will make him feel fuller, and he already gave in, and Jonghyun is watching him so closely, and. Taemin breathes. Brushes Jonghyun’s hair out of his eyes, stroking it back, so soft through his fingers.

“Is this weird for you?” he asks before he can rethink. “Being with me like this.”

Half of him is terrified Jonghyun will play it off as a joke, ask like what just to hear Taemin say dirty things, but instead Jonghyun tells him, “It feels like a dream, sometimes.”

_Like we’ll wake up any second?_

“Sometimes I realize in the middle, like, ‘Jonghyunnie hyung is fucking me.’”

Jonghyun’s eyes narrow, and he barely lets Taemin finish before he’s saying, “You moan my name the whole time.”

Taemin shouldn’t have to reassure him, “I didn’t mean bad weird, hyung,” after everything, but then he’s leaning in to kiss him, too, slow and open-mouthed, until Jonghyun’s eyes slide shut and he sighs into Taemin’s mouth. Before Taemin can sneak the rest of it out, they open again, dark and endless. “Just…you’ve been in my life longer than anyone, besides my family. I guess I’d stopped thinking things could change between us.”

More like Taemin never let himself think about it in the first place. Dreams and fantasies don’t count. And now that it’s reality, he’s stopped thinking at all.

Jonghyun presses another kiss to his mouth, lips so soft Taemin could die. Somehow his voice is even softer. “Ask me something else.”

Something safer this time. Something easy. Something like…

“What color should I dye my hair this time?”

Jonghyun reaches up to tuck a strand behind Taemin’s ear, before cupping his cheek, hand so warm on Taemin’s skin.

“I like it black, but anything is fine. You’ll look cute no matter what,” he says. “Should I bleach mine again? You said you got used to me like this, I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”

That’s Jonghyun’s first question? Taemin shouldn’t be disappointed when they’ll only get harder. Anyway, the answer is easy, especially since Jonghyun put it into words already. “Anything is fine. The important thing is that it’s on your head.”

Jonghyun breaks into a smile, giving himself away even as he misinterprets Taemin on purpose just to say, “You looked worse with a buzz cut than me,” like Taemin doesn’t know that better than anyone. Whenever Jonghyun came to the base to visit him he always wanted to take a selca together, no matter what excuse Taemin tried, and long after Taemin’s grown his hair back out, he still probably has a million pictures from then he could use against him. Anyway, now Jonghyun wants to know, “What about tattoos, where should I get my next one? Oh, that’s right.”

Oh. Yeah. Two questions in a row. Kiss. Taemin is dying to pick his mouth, but that’s too obvious, so he points to his philtrum instead. Jonghyun leans in and presses his lips to it, there and gone. Taemin regrets it as he lifts away, but instead of clinging to his shoulder and pulling him back in, he slides his hand down over Jonghyun’s chest. The tattoo inked over his heart peeks out between his fingers.

“What does this one mean? You’ve never said.”

It took until 2017 for SM to break down and let Jonghyun get his first tattoo, and in no time at all, the music that lived inside him was written across his skin, album titles and concerts and lyrics. Even after he stopped coming back and performing, though, he must have kept getting tattoos. This one is a symbol Taemin can’t recognize, small and blacker than black.

“It’s a secret,” Jonghyun tells him.

Shooting him a look does no good, and fucking it out of him is probably against the rules. But still, “Isn’t that the whole point?”

Jonghyun’s mouth curls into a smirk and his eyes drop to Taemin’s lips, sending heat curling through Taemin’s stomach. “Is it?”

Taemin gives him his elbow this time.

And now it’s Jonghyun’s turn again. “Why a hotel, why not your place again? Or mine.”

Easy again. Kind of.

“The photo shoot was in another room here,” Taemin says. He doesn’t add, _And I thought of you fucking me into the mattress the whole time._ Besides, “Don’t you think it’d look weird if you kept staying over?” As soon as he’s said it he regrets it, because no, it wouldn’t. No one would even believe Jonghyun ever even looked at Taemin, least of all the people closest to them. Taemin’s stomach twists. “And your place is even worse, what if your mom found out?”

Jonghyun skims his hand up Taemin’s side to tweak his nipple between his thumb and forefinger, hot pinch of pain-pleasure.

“The risk of getting caught doesn’t turn you on at all?” Jonghyun asks him, before adding quickly, “Not counting by my mother.”

Sometimes Taemin used to imagine Jonghyun finding him with his boyfriend between his legs, watching Jonghyun watch him get fucked, but real life isn’t like porn. Jonghyun would have turned red and walked right back out and not talked to Taemin for a week afterwards, until he got himself drunk enough to call him finally. And then Taemin would’ve had to listen to Jonghyun try to apologize for walking in on them, and he could never tell Jonghyun how sorry he was for fucking someone else when that someone else was dating him, and they both would have had to pretend they weren’t hurting each other. And if someone walked in on him and Jonghyun right now…

_Your life would be over, hyung. Mine too._

“Why would it?” Taemin says way, way too late. Jonghyun holds his eyes.

“There was this one girl I went out with,” is as far as he gets before Taemin’s fingers curl into a fist against his chest. Taemin slips his hand over his skin and twists it in the sheets between them as he goes on. “I don’t think we ever fucked in a bed. We never even made it through a whole date, she always wanted it so bad, bathrooms in restaurants, back rooms in the club, my car, hers, wherever. The one time I actually went home with her we just slept. It’s probably lucky she got bored of me so fast. Her name was a lot bigger than ours.”

Taemin’s stomach has twisted up so tight by the time Jonghyun is done that there’s no room to keep the words inside him, and he can’t stop his voice from rising, sharp and brittle, “That’s not what I asked at all.”

It’d be so much easier to roll away and hide in the pillow, pull away from Jonghyun’s touch, but instead he lies still under Jonghyun’s hand and lets him ask, “You don’t like hearing about other people?”

“Would you want to hear about things I’ve done to get my boyfriends off?”

Taemin didn’t say it to hurt Jonghyun, he didn’t mean to, but Jonghyun’s expression just barely flickers, and he keeps his voice level. “That’s not what I asked you either, Taeminnie.”

“I know this isn’t dating, I’m not stupid.” But maybe he is, because it shouldn’t hurt this much to admit it, and he has to turn his face into his pillow rather than watch those words hit Jonghyun’s face. Voice muffled, he goes on, “I just don’t want you to think of anyone else when you’re with me.”

As soon as he gets it out, Jonghyun is telling him, “I don’t,” stroking his hand up Taemin’s back, pressing kisses into his hair, nuzzling him, trying to coax him back out into the open. In a minute. When he feels like he’s on solid ground again. “I only said that because I don’t know how to tell you what I want when it’s something I can’t ask for. I wanted to make you want it too somehow.”

It’s not that Taemin doesn’t want it. He does, so badly his whole body flushes with heat just thinking about it, Jonghyun having him whenever and wherever he wants him, showing the world who Taemin belongs to. It’s that he won’t allow himself to. If Jonghyun had gotten caught fucking that girl, SM could have talked Dispatch down to pictures of them making out, but with Taemin, even if SM paid them off or Dispatch decided against outing them, just the fact that the pictures existed could ruin them. If something happened to Jonghyun because of him, he could never live with himself. Even losing him to someone else would be better.

“I want things like that sometimes, too,” Taemin says finally, emerging to meet Jonghyun’s eyes again.

“There are things I can’t give you, you mean.” Jonghyun searches his face, but he’ll never know what to look for. “Like what?”

“Ask me something else.”

Jonghyun leans in to claim his kiss, soft and slow. Taemin is still working on opening his eyes again when Jonghyun asks, “What’s your favorite part of my body? Below my shoulders.”

And just like that, they’re back to things so obvious they go without saying. Taemin knows the exact smirk he’ll find on Jonghyun’s face before he even sees it. He reaches up to press his fingers to Jonghyun’s lips, smushing them and drawing them back from his teeth, but it’s no good, there’s no way to make Jonghyun look less sexy, especially when he takes Taemin’s fingers into his mouth, so hot and wet. Taemin is stuck with the only words left in his head: “You know.”

He skims his hand down Jonghyun’s chest and stomach, fingers slick with spit, but before he can wrap them around Jonghyun’s dick, Jonghyun catches his hand in his, placing it back onto the mattress between them and covering it with his own.

“That’s not an answer,” he says. “Should I make you kiss it again?”

“Your dick.” Taemin has taken it in his mouth and his ass and his hand, and he’d die to just to lay here and let Jonghyun rub it all over his body, find some way to fuck every little part of him, but saying it out loud feels so dirty somehow. Jonghyun watches as his blush spreads down his neck and chest, so Taemin takes advantage while his eyes are off his face to ask, “What’s your favorite part of mine? Also not counting my face.”

Jonghyun takes his time looking, eyes kissing every inch of Taemin’s skin, but then all he has for Taemin is, “I can’t choose. Everything.”

That’s cheating, or else Taemin would have said it too. “Then the part you look at the most. My ass, huh.”

His breathing catches in his throat as Jonghyun’s hand slides over it, palm so hot and rough against his skin he can’t stop himself from arching back into his touch, and he barely keeps up as Jonghyun says, “You think I’m just saying that. Have you seen yourself?” Taemin should have asked Jonghyun the same thing when he first asked to play. How is Taemin even supposed to remember how to talk when Jonghyun is naked? Jonghyun lets him lean in for a kiss, lets Taemin stick his tongue in his mouth and push his thigh between his, rubbing up against his dick, just barely starting to harden. Jonghyun gasps into his mouth, then pulls away to say into it, “The mirror in the bathroom is really nice, I’ll have to show you later how beautiful you are for me.”

Heat shoots through Taemin, his own dick stirring. “By fucking me in front of it?”

“You’ve never done that before?”

“Is that your question?” Jonghyun’s mouth curls, and just like that, Taemin is shaking his head, handing Jonghyun another one of his firsts. He wishes he could give them all to him. “I could show you, too,” he says, aching to try again and see if Jonghyun will let him take him in his hand this time, or slide down Jonghyun’s body and feel his dick harden in his mouth. “I want to.”

“You already did, baby.” Three times, no less, but Taemin shouldn’t have to explain how that isn’t enough. Jonghyun smiles at the look on his face, eyes crinkling up. “I like hearing you say it. You never would otherwise, not unless I make you.”

_I love you. Make me say that._

Just the thought has his heart beating so hard he can barely find the words to get back to safety. “My turn. How come you’ve never offered to produce my albums before?”

“How come you’ve never asked me?”

“You’ve never made me ask for anything before,” Taemin says. “Our schedules never worked out, either, you were always busy with someone else.”

“That’s how our lives work.” Jonghyun pauses, biting his lip, but whatever it is he’s keeping back, he’ll end up saying it. All Taemin has to do is wait, but instead he grinds his thigh against Jonghyun’s dick again. Jonghyun moans, tiny and broken. “Whenever I broke it off with someone, you’d ask me to meet your new boyfriend. It always took you forever to work up to it, but I could tell just from looking at you.”

“How many women have you dated?” Taemin snaps before he can stop himself, but that’s a question and he doesn’t want to know the answer. “Forget I said that, let me think of something else.”

“You just told me not to think about other people, and I haven’t kept count so I’d have to.” Jonghyun nestles closer, hair whispering against the pillow, this weird smile playing about his mouth. “I’d rather take my punishment~”

Taemin kisses him again. Jonghyun’s lips are so soft he could die, and when Taemin draws away, his eyes are still closed. “Your turn, hyung.”

Jonghyun opens his eyes to look at him again. “You can have it.”

The only questions Taemin doesn’t know the answer to are things he’s spent years not asking, things he’d rather go his whole life without knowing than risk Jonghyun saying the thing he doesn’t want to hear. Maybe that’s stupid. Selfish. He’d take Jonghyun’s everything in a second if he could give him even half the life he wants, but he doesn’t even know it all.

He dredges them up from so deep inside himself, but they’re only words, and saying them shouldn’t hurt so much. “Had you ever been with a man before me?”

Fifteen years of not knowing and not asking, and in two seconds Jonghyun tells him, “Yes.”

The exact wrong thing. It’s not as bad as he’d thought and so much worse, all at the same time, and somehow it all comes out as, “Really?”

Really. Jonghyun is looking at him the same way he has for years, and he’s had to learn so many things on Taemin’s body, and as soon as he gets it up he’ll fuck Taemin again and tell him things like _you’re so good, baby_ and _you were meant for me_ and he’ll mean them all, but really. And Taemin really shouldn’t have asked. Jonghyun tilts his head, baring his neck, dark eyes fixed on Taemin’s face. His hands tangle in his hair as Taemin presses his lips to the soft skin there, breathing hissing as Taemin’s teeth sink into it.

But then he’s pulling Taemin back by his hair, like lightning down Taemin’s spine.

“Is it really so surprising?” he asks.

Taemin’s stomach knots up, and he’s dying to hide in the pillow again, but he just barely tests Jonghyun’s hold on him, and the first tug has more words spill out of him. “I guess I’ve never met him.”

“We weren’t dating, Taemin-ah,” Jonghyun tells him, voice as gentle as his hand is firm. Then, all in a rush, “It was before we even debuted, with this guy I went to school with, one time. We jerked each other off and I tried blowing him.”

Taemin doesn’t know how to tell him that it still counts and it still hurts without telling him that he already liked him back then. Then Jonghyun really would know everything.

“What was his name?” Taemin asks.

Jonghyun pulls a face, trying to think back, and Taemin wishes he could hate him for it. At last he says, “Jinwoo?”

“He was your first and you can’t even remember his name?”

“The first guy, not my first. That was Hyejin. You met her.”

And he doesn’t want to hear about her, either. It was bad enough when she used to come around the training center. It would have been better if she’d let Jonghyun forget Taemin existed, but she tried to be nice to him, buy him snacks and pet his hair and ask him if he liked noona better than Jonghyun. If Taemin had said yes just once, maybe she would have stopped. Instead he never said anything at all, and he went years like that. Even now, still.

“You’re always saying I’m the one who loves less, but I guess it doesn’t mean as much to you as it does to me.”

Taemin reaches back, pulling Jonghyun’s hand out of his hair, head hitting the pillow with a thwump, but instead of letting go Jonghyun laces their fingers together, pressing himself to Taemin’s side and propping his head up on his hand to stare down at Taemin, and just like that, he’s all Taemin sees again.

“He didn’t, Taeminnie,” Jonghyun says. “I was curious and he was there. He must’ve freaked out. We never hung out again after that.”

Against his will, Taemin feels a pang in his heart. His first time with a guy, they’d been dating for two months and Taemin had years and years of porn and masturbation to know exactly what he wanted, even if he didn’t get it. Jonghyun must have felt so alone, and in twenty years, this is probably the first time he’s ever talked about it, but when Taemin squeezes Jonghyun’s hand, Jonghyun smiles down at him, easy as anything.

Is it okay if Taemin is selfish and moves on? “And then you debuted and figured it was risky enough dating women.”

“I was pretty dumb back then. I used to think that if you were a girl, I’d have to date you to protect you from all the guys who’d be hitting on you.” Jonghyun brings Taemin’s hand to his mouth, brushing his lips across his knuckles, eyes so black staring into his. “There are so many as it is.”

Somehow Taemin finds the breath to say, “Not really, not anymore.”

Jonghyun narrows his eyes at him. “So you admit you were just pretending not to realize back then.”

“More like I didn’t notice until it stopped?” Taemin unlaces one finger from Jonghyun’s to flick the tip of his nose. “And it was never that many. Half the time they were joking.”

“They were confused,” Jonghyun corrects him. “And insecure. They would have been an even bigger waste of your time than the guys you did pick.” When he leans down for a kiss, Taemin opens his mouth for his tongue at the first press of their lips, aching to feel Jonghyun push inside him, but Jonghyun lifts away to stare at him some more instead. With each passing moment under his eyes, Taemin feels more naked. “The way men look at you hasn’t changed, Taeminnie. I think I would know. It’s the way you look at yourself.”

Taemin doesn’t care if anyone else ever looks at him again, as long as Jonghyun doesn’t look away. He was the first person in Taemin’s life to ever make him feel beautiful, and Taemin would give anything for him to be the last.

_Fairies aren’t supposed to age._

_If I have to get old you do, too. Otherwise I’d look at you and you’d never look back at me._

“It’s your turn to ask me, hyung,” Taemin says, biting his lip as Jonghyun slides his hand down his chest, but he stops short at his stomach, spreading his fingers over Taemin’s skin. Taemin resists the urge to grab it and drag it lower.

“Do you think of me when you touch yourself?” After everything they’ve done to each other, how could he not? But Jonghyun’s eyes darken as Taemin nods, and then he leans down to lick Taemin’s bottom lip, hot and wet. “Did you ever before?”

“That’s two,” Taemin says quickly. And then, helpless to stop himself, “Did you?”

“Yes.” This time it’s the answer Taemin wanted, but he’s barely breathed out when Jonghyun says, “Same question again.”

“Sometimes I thought of you when I was with someone else.”

Not sometimes, every time. Taemin should be ashamed and guilty and embarrassed at himself, but no matter how many boyfriends he’s burned through, they’ve never stopped feeling like other men to him. And none of them have ever made him feel the way Jonghyun does with just a look, just a touch, not even when they were balls deep inside him. Jonghyun’s hand feels heavier on his stomach with each breath he takes, but he lies still, letting Jonghyun see everything.

“Our first night together, you told me that you’ve been in love before,” Jonghyun says finally. “You looked like you were thinking of someone. Who was it?”

Is he asking because he knows the answer or because he doesn’t, somehow? Who else could it be?

_You._

Taemin’s phone is ringing.

Which, what? Now?

Phone. Ringing. It hits his ears from millions of miles off, but he barely rolls over in time to catch it before it buzzes its way off the bedside table. His eyes blur over the name before Jonghyun’s voice tells him, “Don’t answer it.”

“It’s Manager hyung, he’ll just call back until I do.”

And if Taemin turns off his phone it’ll eat at him all night, and Manager hyung already has enough stress because of him, and. And he’d have to answer Jonghyun. Taemin gives himself one deep breath before he accepts the call and presses his phone to his ear, ignoring Jonghyun’s eyes on him.

“Hyung?”

Jonghyun noses into Taemin’s hair, making Taemin’s heart flip over and his brain jam up. _Hyung._

“I’m not happy to be calling either,” Manager hyung says, so loud even Jonghyun could hear. He gets too used to talking over all the noise when he’s driving. “We never went over your schedule tomorrow.”

Taemin’s chest constricts. “Did something else come up?”

Jonghyun goes still at those words, breath puffing hotly against Taemin’s neck, but all Manager hyung has to say is, “Nope, back to recording,” and his lips brush the nape of Taemin’s neck, tongue sliding over that one spot, hot and wet and electric.

It’s his turn to talk. “Oh.”

“Creative called to say they’re sending someone to sit in again, but they’re all scared of Jonghyunnie anyway.”

“Because they don’t know him,” Taemin manages, but his reward is Jonghyun grazing his teeth across his skin, mouthing over the knobs of his spine. When Taemin tries wriggling away, Jonghyun’s hand slides down over his ass, firm, possessive, melting every muscle in Taemin’s body.

“How was dinner?”

For a second Taemin doesn’t get why he’s even asking, before his lie comes back to him. Then he has to come up with an answer that’s not _I had Jonghyunnie hyung’s come._ Finally he gets out, “We had steak,” and now Jonghyun is having him, kissing and licking his way down Taemin’s back, and Taemin is so hard suddenly he can barely see straight, dick pressing into the mattress. When he shifts his hips, desperate for relief, Jonghyun pins them to the bed with both hands.

“And Jonginnie?”

Jonghyun licks down the curve of his spine to the cleft of his ass.

 _“Hyung.”_ Taemin can’t keep it back, and then, so fast the words jumble up, “He’s fine. If I sounded weird just now it’s because I had to sneeze.” And if that excuse sounds dumb, that’s because Taemin’s brain stopped working the minute Jonghyun squeezed his ass, pressing his thumbs between the cheeks to spread them open. “I’m gonna hang up now.”

Jonghyun leans in to kiss Taemin’s hole, dirty sweet press of his lips that sends Taemin’s whole body white hot. It’s all he can do to bite down on his fist and keep his moan back as Jonghyun’s tongue flicks out against the rim, so hot and wet and, “Wait, Taemin-ah.” Taemin breathes in somehow, harsh and ragged around his hand, but then Jonghyun just barely pushes inside him, and all the air in his body whooshes out. “I almost forgot to ask, what time should I pick you up tomorrow?” Manager hyung continues. “Early or on time?”

Early is one word, on time is two, but he’s going to need a lot more than that, and the only one he knows anymore is, “Hyung.” Jonghyun rolls his tongue over his hole and then flattens it against it and sucks, this tight wet heat that makes Taemin’s thighs tremble and his dick twitch, trapped against the mattress. Hyung, what? “I’m staying over at Jonginnie’s.” _Hyung, don’t._ Jonghyun’s fingers knead his ass, palms so rough against his skin as he licks and sucks, slick wet sounds that ruin Taemin. His voice comes out so breathy his face flames, but he’ll die of shame later. “You don’t need to pick me up, he’ll give me a ride. I’ll just meet you there.”

There. He hangs up before Manager hyung can say goodbye, sending his phone clattering back onto the bedside table with clumsy fingers, and the minute he turns away his world narrows down to Jonghyun’s tongue. So hot and wet fucking into him, shallow and teasing and dirty enough to set every inch of Taemin’s skin on fire. Jonghyun’s fingers dig into his flesh as he spreads his ass wider somehow, stretching his hole open and leaving Taemin feeling so empty he could die without Jonghyun’s dick, if Jonghyun’s mouth doesn’t kill him first. He claws at the sheets, twisting his hands into them, burying his face in the pillow, but even hidden and muffled, each sound Jonghyun drags out of him comes out louder, and with each flick of his tongue and press of his lips Jonghyun breaks him a little more, until he’s whining and moaning and crying out, breathless and shaky, pushing his ass back into Jonghyun’s hold, trying to take his tongue deeper somehow, clenching around it. When Jonghyun lifts away, suddenly, finally, it’s like Taemin can’t survive without him.

“Hyung, please, I need—“ _your dick._ The words die in his throat at the feel of it pressed to his ass, hot and thick and heavy. Jonghyun thrusts shallowly against him, length rubbing up and down the crack of Taemin’s ass. Taemin’s knees sink into the mattress and his muscles turn to butter as he raises his hips, pushing his ass back into Jonghyun’s hips, desperate for friction, to make Jonghyun gasp and moan and lose control. Instead Jonghyun laughs, breathless and ragged, hot under Taemin’s skin, but all Taemin’s shame left his body the moment Jonghyun first put his hands on him, and what’s left is need, naked and raw and endless. He’d do anything, say anything, at least until the head of Jonghyun’s dick catches on his hole and every word but, “Jonghyun hyung,” burns away. That and, “Fuck me.”

Jonghyun pushes inside him, so thick he has Taemin biting his pillow at the stretch, fucking Taemin open long and smooth and slow, hole so slick with Jonghyun’s come and spit he can hear it as Jonghyun slides deeper. It feels like forever when he bottoms out and Taemin is full again. Jonghyun takes his hips in his hands, fingers spread wide over his skin, holding him up as he pulls out, then pulling him in, back onto his dick, angle so much deeper than Taemin even knew he could take. Again, dragging Taemin down the bed, again and his head leaves the pillow, hair in his face and his mouth, again and again and again, each thrust so slow and deep it almost stops his heart, and he’s left scrabbling at the mattress for purchase as Jonghyun fucks the strength out of his arms, spine arching impossibly, thighs trembling, legs splayed so wide he can’t lift himself up.

Jonghyun pulls out, long endless slide that leaves Taemin clenching around the head, desperation burning him inside out. “Do you think you can come like this?”

How can Jonghyun still be playing with him? Taemin thinks he knows the answer right up until Jonghyun’s dick fills him to bursting again, but he’s already shaken his head.

“You don’t?”

Jonghyun’s fingers tighten on his hips, raising him up higher, dragging him in so that his ass smacks up against Jonghyun’s hips, dick so deep inside Taemin can taste it. When he pulls out, slow and sure, he leaves Taemin helpless to even breathe without him.

“I can’t, hyung, not untouched.” Taemin’s voice breaks around Jonghyun’s dick as Jonghyun pushes back in. “I never have before.”

“Because no one’s made you,” Jonghyun tells him. “None of those useless guys you’ve dated. They couldn’t give you what you need, I can’t believe they got to touch you.”

“I let them.”

“You don’t know what you need, either. I do.”

Then he should be giving it to Taemin, fucking him so hard he forgets every single thing besides his dick inside him, not pulling all the way out and leaving Taemin so empty he could die. The head catches on the rim of Taemin’s hole, big and hot and slick with precome, making even more of a mess of it. Of Taemin, too, moaning and panting and twisting his hands uselessly in the sheets, his own dick throbbing, hips jerking helplessly against Jonghyun’s hold. Taemin gets his elbows under him, then his hands, pushing himself up shakily, just as Jonghyun fucks into him again, one endless thrust that hits that white hot spot inside Taemin.

_“Hyung.”_

“Tell me it feels different, I’m different.” Jonghyun’s dick pounds into him, faster, harder, relentless, so good, so thick and hot and big and _hyung. hyung. hyung._ Taemin ruts back against it, moving with Jonghyun, meeting his hips, even as his arms weaken with each thrust. “I’m the only one.”

“I don’t want anyone else,” Taemin chokes out. “I need you.”

Jonghyun releases his hips finally, leaving Taemin struggling to take his own weight again as he slides his hands up over his ass, squeezing, kneading, spreading his cheeks, melting every muscle in his body, twisting Taemin up so tight inside even as his dick fucks him open.

“What do you need, baby?”

“Your dick,” Taemin pants, even though Jonghyun already knows better than him, he’s fucking Taemin so good, filling him up so full. “Fuck me so hard you’ll stay inside me until next time.”

Jonghyun groans, low and broken, fucking and fucking and fucking him, but somehow he still finds the words to say, “That won’t be that long. You lied to hyung so you could stay with me tonight,” as his hands rub over the small of Taemin’s back, fingers spread wide and greedy over Taemin’s skin. “I’ll make it last until it starts to get light, and then I’ll fall asleep inside you. Probably dream of you and wake up hard.” His hand slides up into Taemin’s hair, yanking his head back, making him see stars, as rough as his voice is gentle. “Hmmm?”

Taemin isn’t going to say it, he’s not going to whine when Jonghyun is giving him every single thing he has, but Jonghyun fucks it out of him in the next breath: “And then we’ll have to go back to work.”

And he promises Taemin immediately, “I’ll drive you. I took my car,” and suddenly Taemin wishes with every last cell in his body that he had asked for a kiss instead, that he had Jonghyun’s lips on his, his tongue in his mouth. His dick is so deep inside Taemin that Jonghyun could taste it on him, and Taemin’s had it in his mouth twice already tonight, and somehow that’s not enough for him.

“And then I’ll think about sucking your dick in SM’s parking lot,” spills out of him. “I would if you asked. Even if you didn’t, if you just dragged me down and fucked my mouth till you came.”

“What if I drag you into the backseat? Send you in still wet with my come.”

Taemin’s body goes white hot, everything slowing down and speeding up, Jonghyun’s words and his dick inside him, his hands on his skin, his grunts and his hips slapping against Taemin’s ass, slick wet sounds as he uses him, in and out and in and out and fuck.

“I’d just want it again,” Taemin moans, arms shaking so bad as he fucks himself back onto Jonghyun’s dick, greed the only thing keeping him from collapsing. “I’m so sick of feeling empty, and nothing else can fill me up. My fingers are useless.”

Jonghyun laughs at him breathlessly, teasing him, “They’re so small,” the way he’s spent half his life doing, way way before Taemin ever put them all over his body or wrapped them around his dick, or fisted them in the sheets as Jonghyun pitches his weight forward with his next thrust, flattening Taemin against the mattress. He braces himself over Taemin, hands coming down on either side of his body as Taemin grinds his ass helplessly against his hips, trying to take him deeper somehow while his own dick weeps precome, trapped against his stomach. “What about that monster?”

Same answer. “Useless. I wish I had a dildo shaped like you.”

Taemin hears Jonghyun smile, this small amused noise, and then he leans in and Taemin feels it against his neck, curve of his lips, teeth pressing into his skin, his tongue dragging over it, hot and wet and messy. His voice right in his ear. “You have me.”

“Most of the time I don’t,” Taemin shouldn’t be saying, but then Jonghyun bites his ear and his dick hits that spot, again again again, pushing Taemin so far past his limits. “The studio is the worst. It gets so bad, I need you so bad. Sometimes I look at you and taste your dick.”

“Can you taste it right now?” Taemin cranes back to meet his lips, opening his mouth for Jonghyun’s tongue, rubbing his up against it, sucking on it, sloppy and needy. Jonghyun moans into his mouth, hips jerking against his ass, forcing himself deeper still somehow, fucking Taemin into the mattress, dick sliding over his own wet spot. “I’m so close, Taeminnie.”

Just the thought leaves Taemin crazy with desperation, sending him hotter and hotter as he works himself back onto Jonghyun’s dick, clenching down on it, tightening around him until Jonghyun feels even bigger inside him, thick and hot and full of come, ready to burst inside him.

“Come, hyung.” He’s begging now. “Come inside me. Do it. I need it. _Please.”_

Jonghyun moans, helpless and loud. The bed shakes and squeaks beneath them as his thrusts grow harder, faster, rougher, filling Taemin up fuller, one hand reaching up to push the hair out of Taemin’s face, the half that’s not buried in the pillow. Taemin reaches up to help with shaky fingers, combing it back, letting Jonghyun see whatever he wants, his eyes sliding shut, the flush in his cheeks, his swollen lips, parting as he sucks air in. Jonghyun gives him his fingers. Taemin takes as many into his mouth as he can fit, forcing it open so wide his jaw would be aching if he could feel pain through the pleasure. He closes his lips around them, rubbing his tongue over them, sucking and sucking on them until Jonghyun’s taste fills his mouth. And then Jonghyun groans, “Fuck, Taeminnie,” and he feels it, hot and wet and endless, Jonghyun coming and coming and coming so deep inside him, and Jonghyun’s voice is endless too, soft and low and worshipful, telling him stupid things he never asked like, “I love you.”

Taemin comes harder than he ever has in his life.

It’s still dark when Jonghyun pulls out onto the empty street the next morning. Taemin’s ass aches, but every time he shifts in his seat, it’s pleasure and not pain that shoots up his spine, another reminder of last night. There are new marks on his neck and chest and bruises on his hips and thighs, and Jonghyun is still right here next to him, and he will be all day. Every glance he shoots Taemin makes him feel naked, every little smile takes him back to his kisses, and his hands on the steering wheel make Taemin remember how they felt on his body, big and sure. His hair is still wet from the shower they took together, scented with the shampoo Taemin worked into it, and he’s wearing yesterday’s clothes, rumpled from use, shirt stained with Taemin’s come.

They have enough time to stop at his place to change, and Taemin comes up too in the end, creeping past his mother’s shut door and following Jonghyun through the maze of boxes to his room, as big and dark and silent as ever. The last time was half a year ago, when Jonghyun got drunk at a company dinner Bora had to skip for the JYP equivalent, and Taemin carried Jonghyun up here on his back. That day he lay there and watched with black eyes as Taemin undid his belt, sliding clumsy hands up Taemin’s body to pull him down on the bed with him. Today Jonghyun tells him to pick whatever he wants from his closet, then rethinks that in half a second, as though Taemin would want to steal anything Jonghyun would buy. He forgets to even pretend to be annoyed when Jonghyun returns to him with a kiss and fresh clothes, butter soft against Taemin’s skin, and then he forgets everything else, too, watching as Jonghyun changes too.

But it’s over as soon as it’s begun, all looking and no touching except for the kisses Taemin steals, and the studio isn’t that much further. The sun is just barely starting to rise when they turn into the parking garage. Part of Taemin is dying for Jonghyun to keep circling until they’re down far enough that no one would ever find them, but instead he takes the first empty spot. If Manager hyung sees them…

Taemin should be going for his door, getting his feet under him, walking until the light hits him again. No, he should’ve asked Jonghyun to drop him off out front. But he didn’t and he can’t make himself move a single muscle, either, except to tilt the rear view mirror towards himself. It was too hard to take his eyes off of Jonghyun in the bathroom mirror to get a good look at himself, but even in this light, there’d be no way to hide the hickey on his neck and collar bone. He should have asked Jonghyun for a turtleneck instead of wearing whatever Jonghyun wanted to see him in, and there’s that word again. He tugs at his collar uselessly, then gives up, pushing the mirror back towards Jonghyun. Jonghyun, who’s just sitting there watching him check himself over, eyes dark, tiniest smirk on his lips. He reaches over and pushes his fingertip into the mark on Taemin’s neck, making him gasp, before his hand falls into Taemin’s lap, fingers spread over his thigh.

“Manager hyung is gonna know I lied to him,” Taemin tells him. “Unless he goes back to thinking me and Jonginnie are dating~?” Jonghyun’s hand says it’s not funny, squeezing his thigh, and his face says it’s really really not, at least until he gets too close to read and then Jonghyun’s mouth is on his, hot and wet, lips and tongue and teeth, kissing Taemin breathless. But the point was, “He already asked me about it once, when I got back from Japan.”

“Even when it was a problem, he always let you do whatever you want,” Jonghyun says into his mouth.

All it takes is Taemin’s hand on his chest, just barely pushing, and Jonghyun is back on his side of the car again, and Taemin has to live without his touch somehow. Just looking at him is bad enough. Just hearing his voice.

“Because he knew I was careful,” Taemin makes himself say. They both know they’re being anything but, and there’s too much evidence to even try denying it. He can still feel Jonghyun’s lips on his, and there are the marks on his own body and the ones under Jonghyun’s clothes, teeth marks on his shoulder, scratches across his back, red and vivid against his skin. Now that Taemin looks, there’s one on his neck, too, tiny and dark. “Your mom might notice too. I didn’t think of that, sorry.”

Jonghyun shakes his head. “If you could think of things like that when we’re together, then I’d be the one who should be.”

Taemin hasn’t been thinking at all. Not when he texted Jonghyun yesterday, not with the words Jonghyun blurted out as he came still in his head and his body and his heart, echoing through the emptiness inside him only Jonghyun can fill, and not now that he’s leaning in for another kiss. It starts out soft and slow and melts into wet and deep and messy, Jonghyun’s lips parting for Taemin’s tongue, his fingers tangling in his hair as Taemin fucks it into his mouth. He slides his hand down Jonghyun’s chest and stomach, cupping his dick through his pants, just barely stirring to life under his touch. Jonghyun came for him so many times last night there was barely any left in him by dawn, and Taemin’s still so desperate for it, rubbing, squeezing, grinding his palm against his crotch as Jonghyun gasps and moans into his mouth, low and pained. The one single thing left in his head is coaxing Jonghyun to hardness somehow, taking him in his hands and his mouth, giving him his naked body where anyone could see, whatever it would take.

Jonghyun’s hand comes down over his, dragging it away even as he tugs Taemin’s head back, string of spit forming between their mouths, air rushing back into Taemin’s lungs. The memory of where they are never left Taemin, but now he has to let it take over again. He strains against Jonghyun’s hold for one last kiss, hard and open-mouthed and still so sweet he could die, then pulls away. Jonghyun releases him, but as Taemin reaches for his door, he stops him again with one word.

“Taemin-ah.” Then Taemin’s heart stops too, turning back to find a look he’s never seen before on Jonghyun’s face. For one endless moment, Jonghyun hesitates and Taemin lives and dies. _You don’t need to explain, hyung. I know you love me, even if it’s not like that. It’s just that if you say it out loud, I’m only going to hear the second part._ “Are you really tired?”

Taemin thinks it’s relief that’s crushing him. “I’ll probably crash later. What about you?”

“I’m used to getting no sleep.”

“I am too. Just not like this.” This, as in taking Jonghyun’s dick every single way Jonghyun knew how to give it to him. His body goes hot again, including his ears and his face and yeah. “I’ve never done it so many times in one night.”

Jonghyun smiles almost shyly. “Me neither.”

“Shouldn’t it slow down as you get older?”

Jonghyun reaches over to run his finger over the furl of Taemin’s ear, making it burn hotter, before tucking a strand of hair behind it. When his hand slips down to cup Taemin’s cheek, Taemin can’t stop himself from leaning in to his touch.

“Not when we have so many years to burn through,” Jonghyun says.

What happens when they’re all caught up?

The question lodges in Taemin’s chest, but it’s been a long time since they stopped playing. If he asked Jonghyun, _Did you mean it?_ he might not even get an answer. Maybe Jonghyun doesn’t remember. Maybe he does. Maybe he meant it in the way Taemin wants. Maybe he didn’t.

“We should go, hyung,” Taemin says. No maybe.

Taemin stays as late as Jonghyun again, but they both go home earlier than they have since they started, and say good night next to their cars, same as the night before last. Taemin wants to watch Jonghyun drive away, but Manager hyung wouldn’t want to watch him do it, so he turns and leaves first again, and Jonghyun lets him. And somehow after everything, that’s it. They won’t see each other again until work tomorrow, and the next time they’re alone will have to be the time Taemin doesn’t give in to himself.

As soon as he gets home Taemin kicks his shoes off leaves his coat on the floor of the entryway and heads straight for his bed, faceplanting onto it. The mattress rises up to meet his body instead of sinking under his weight, so much firmer than the one he and Jonghyun spent all yesterday in. So much bigger somehow, too, when he’s all by himself. He scoots himself up until his head hits his pillow and his feet are no longer dangling, and that’s it for a while. Until he curls up and hugs the pillow to his chest, squeezing his eyes shut tight. Then he rolls over onto his back and stares at the ceiling until he stops really seeing it. And then he just lies there and focuses on breathing, and tries to figure out if he’s hungry enough to get back up to eat. He has to get up to change into his pajamas, too, no matter how much Jonghyun’s shirt smells of him. The easiest problem to solve should be whether to turn his phone off and use his clock’s alarm, but somehow it wraps him around and around in tighter and tighter circles. Jonghyun won’t call tonight, he promised Taemin he’d try and get some sleep. He won’t text, either. Or sext. Or anything like that. They asked each other so many questions yesterday, but Taemin was too scared to get the one answer he needs now.

_Do you love me?_

Taemin rolls back over, mashing his face into his pillow and going back to breathing. Just breathing. Except then his phone buzzes to life against his thigh, and Taemin’s heart leaps and his stomach opens up and his fingers are so stupid with nerves he can barely get it out of his pocket. It’s the first time in his entire life he’s disappointed to see Jongin’s name, before his brain switches from the things Jonghyun won’t say to him now to the dinner he and Jongin never had, the night he never slept over at Jongin’s place, the breakfast at that place down the street from Jongin’s place they probably would have squeezed in before Taemin had to go to work.

Jongin doesn’t know about things Taemin made up, though, and he was probably happier spending the night with Yena anyway. As soon as Taemin picks up, though, he says, “So you’re still alive. I was starting to wonder.”

“Did you try calling me last night?” Taemin asks, not sure what else that could mean, or why his stomach is squeezing in on itself all of the sudden. “I had my phone off.”

“I texted you,” Jongin says. “A lot. Not just yesterday, all the time. How are you still so bad at this?”

It never used to matter because they saw each other so much they could answer everything in person if they forgot. Phone calls between them never lasted longer than five minutes and usually ended with them agreeing where to meet up. Now, though. The last time they saw each other was…before Taemin went into recording. Weeks ago. They ate lunch together at another restaurant they'd been going to since Jongin's rookie days, and Jongin asked to hear Jonghyun’s first demo, which Taemin had downloaded onto his phone to show him. He told Taemin it didn’t suit him at all, but that was just so that Taemin would make a face and laugh, and on the way out of the restaurant, he told Taemin, _Tell Jonghyunnie hyung I said hi. I don’t know if I should be asking you to take care of him or telling you to tell him to take care of you._

“Sorry, Jongin-ah.” Taemin means it with all his heart, right up until he starts making excuses for himself. “I’ve just been really busy.”

More like he’s only thought of himself. And Jonghyun.

“You must be really tired, too,” Jongin says, so gently he hates himself.

“Mm.”

That’s the whole truth this time, so why doesn’t it feel like it? So what if it’s because Jonghyun fucked him until dawn, sex is one part of their lives they’ve barely ever talked about. And that’s all it was, just sex. Taemin curls up tighter, heart so heavy in his chest, listening as Jongin sighs, long and drawn out, like he’s stretching out to make himself comfortable. If he’s making calls in bed that means Yena must not be there. Right? Or maybe she’s just put her headphones in or something and zoned him out. Not like when Taemin was on the phone with Manager hyung and Jonghyun ate him out, and even if Taemin isn’t going there, not right now, all it takes is that first thought of it, and the memory of it bursts in on Taemin, bright and hot, traces of pleasure that make him ache deep inside.

In the meantime, Jongin is asking him like a normal person, “How’s recording going?”

“It’s going,” Taemin replies, trying so hard to be normal too. “That should be enough for me.”

Should. Taemin barely remembers what that word means anymore. _I get to stare at Jonghyunnie hyung all day, and he stares back. My album felt like life or death but now I can’t stop thinking about him instead, and I’m so scared I’m fucking it up, but he would never let me. He’s so much better at this than me._

Jongin smiles in his ear. “Must be weird calling Jonghyunnie hyung PD-nim.”

Just that one word, and Taemin’s body goes straight back to yesterday again, _PD-nim, PD-nim, PD-nim!_ Heat rises in his face, but hiding in his pillow won’t help. Jongin can’t see how weird he’s being, anyway. Taemin clears his throat. “He says I don’t have to, I can just call him hyung, but that’d be weirder.”

Taemin’s stomach flips over waiting for Jongin’s reply, but then he just moves on. Like normal. “You bought our album, right? Digital doesn’t count.”

Thirty copies, all still sitting in his room at his parents’ house. Manager hyung showed up to drop them off after New Year’s and ended up staying and having dinner, and Taemin forgot why he’d even come until he went up to bed and nearly killed himself tripping over them all, stacks and stacks of albums cascading across his floor. Taemin was only going to open one to look at Jongin’s photos and try to pull his card, see if it was worth making fun of him, but it took him until the third to last album to find it. And then he looked perfect as always.

“I pulled Baekhyun hyung’s photocard for half of them. I don’t know if I’m cursed or lucky,” Taemin says. “Why did SM wait until after Christmas to drop it?”

“Problems with mastering. January is still winter, I guess.”

And SM is still SM. That’s one thing that’ll never change, even if Taemin spends another fifty years of his life on them.

But EXO is still EXO, too. “You sold a ton. You still don’t need my help~”

“Thanks, Taeminnie,” Jongin says, that one smile in his voice, the one that means _don’t be dumb._ “What are you going to do with the extras this time?”

“Probably give them to Manager hyung again. He knows a lot more people than I do, he’ll get rid of them faster.”

“I’ll have to figure out what to do with yours. Our Manager hyung is like a hermit when he gets off work,” Jongin says.

“You’ll probably have forever to think about it, you know how they are. Just because they’re letting me record doesn’t mean they’re planning on doing anything with it,” Taemin probably doesn’t have to remind him. Even if Jongin says he doesn’t care anymore, they spent almost a year sitting on his last solo.

Jongin’s sigh sounds so light, but it weighs Taemin down somehow. “How are you other than work?”

“There’s no such thing.”

It’s supposed to be a joke, and it’s not even true, but instead of laughing at him the way he would have before, Jongin tells him, “There should be, Taeminnie.”

He wouldn’t be saying that if he knew what ‘other than work’ means for Taemin these days. Taemin doesn’t know what it would take to get him to believe that Jonghyun would even look at him after a lifetime of dating women, and he’d have to go so far back to explain himself, and then he’d have to explain all of his other boyfriends, too. Even if Jongin’s never liked any of them, he always thought Taemin did, like he should have. And then after all that, he’d be stuck telling Taemin the same things he’s been telling himself, and maybe finally Taemin would have to listen. _Don’t fuck around with hyung, Taemin-ah. You’ll both end up getting hurt._

_You say you love him. Do you know how he feels about you?_

“You don’t have to worry about me, Jongin-ah. I’m fine.” That’s another lie, and it sounds like one too. Before Jongin can say anything, Taemin asks, “What about you?”

For one long moment, silence. Then, “Fine.”

It’s not a lie when Jongin says it, right? He has to mean it.

“And Yena-ssi?” Taemin presses him.

“Fine.” Jongin hesitates again, long and painful. “Be honest with me about something.”

Taemin’s heart thuds in his chest. “What?”

For endless seconds he lies paralyzed waiting for Jongin’s reply, hot and cold and numb, before Jongin says, “How crazy would you think I am if I said I wanted her to stop working?”

“What?”

“I know it’s not my decision, we haven’t even talked about getting married yet, and I don’t want to be that kind of man,” comes out of Jongin in one long rush, like he’s kept it back for too long. “But SM keeps her at her desk all day, and she has so many other things she wants to do, and I’m sitting on so much money. It makes me feel like shit.”

“It’s her career,” is all Taemin can think to say. Everything else in his head can be summed up with ‘Manager hyung was right,’ dull and echoing. “I don’t know what it means to her, but if it were me…other things in life mean less when I’m not working.”

Maybe everything in Jongin’s life means less when she’s not there, though. It’s not that Taemin doesn’t get that, he does, so much it hurts, it’s just…

“You think I’m being crazy.”

“Mm.”

Taemin would know better than anyone, after the last two weeks with Jonghyun. After yesterday. Was that okay to say, though? Maybe. Jongin admits so easily, “I think so too. Maybe I’ve had too much time off.”

“That’s what Jonghyunnie hyung said when he agreed to produce my album. That he had to get back to work before he forgot how.” Taemin didn’t realize how that was going to sound until it’s already out there, and then the rest of it twists up so tight inside him it feels like something will break if he doesn’t get it out. “He thought he was happy, but he was just bored.”

Jongin barely gives that two seconds of thought, before he’s telling Taemin almost gently, “It’s not like that for me, Taeminnie.”

Even without music, Jongin’s always had so many other things to keep him busy – high end sponsorships, modeling, CF’s, all the parts of being an idol that make Taemin want to curl up and hide. Over the last year, the jobs have dwindled little by little, but Taemin knows that’s not because the calls have stopped coming. Jongin didn’t want to leave the country, or filming would have been set for Yena’s birthday, or time was worth more to him than money now.

“I know,” Taemin says painfully. He has to bite back, _There should be other things for you besides your relationship, too._

He should be grateful when Jongin changes the subject, but he’s not. “Do you have any plans for New Year?”

“Is it on a week day?”

It was dumb to ask Jongin that, but instead of leaving Taemin hanging while he checks, he says immediately, “Wednesday.”

“Then working.”

“What about after?” Jongin presses him. “Dinner with your family?”

“My parents are going to hyung’s house. I’ll probably just go along, hyungsunim’s cooking is really good,” Taemin says.

“What about eating with me instead?”

“What?” Taemin blurts out.

“Is it really that weird?” Yes. No. Not as weird as it is to have the exact question he asked Manager hyung thrown back at him. Jongin doesn’t need to point out, “We used to spend holidays together all the time.”

Back when they spent them all working. The New Years Taemin didn’t spend with Jonghyun and the other hyungs on tour, eating pizza in a hotel room, he still spent on SM’s schedule, and his parents would be in bed by the time he got out for the day. He and Jongin would get together for dinner with Moongyu and Kwonho to have dumplings and rice cake soup, and sometimes they would have rice wine and end the night sprawled out on Jongin’s floor in a mess of blankets, moon shining down on them through the blinds Jongin forgot to close. And then Taemin enlisted, and Jongin went in before he got out, and it’s been years since the last time. And now…

Taemin’s heart is hurting. “I just thought…what about Yena-ssi? She can’t get it off?”

Make that sinking, because Jongin says like it was a given, “She can.” His hesitation stretches weirdly, silence pounding in Taemin’s ears. “It’d be weird with just the three of us, right? I thought maybe you could invite someone, too.”

Great.

“You mean like a double date.”

Those words taste so bitter but his voice comes out like normal, and Jongin only gives him a moment to live with them before he’s saying in a rush, “It doesn’t have to be, it could just be a friend thing. Just don’t ask Moongyu or Kwonho, okay? She’ll get overwhelmed by all of us together, we get so loud.” Taemin doesn’t know how to ask, _Then why can’t it be the four of us for once, why does she have to be there?_ and even that’s better than the next thing that comes into his head. _Was she overwhelmed when it was just me?_ Jongin clears his throat, and all of the sudden Taemin knows what’s coming: “If you can’t find anyone, I could also ask the guy I told you about. Yena’s friend.”

“I’ll just ask one of the hyungs,” he’s saying before he can even think, and then he does.

Long after Jongin has said goodbye and hung up and Taemin should be sleeping, he thinks.

By morning it’s all he can do. Manager hyung stopped for coffee before picking Taemin up, and he has to remind him three separate times which one is his on the way over. Seoul is just waking up around them when they reach the studio, but Jonghyun’s car is already there. If Taemin’s heart does this weird thing at the sight of it, flying and falling, that’s nothing compared to how it feels to see Jonghyun himself again. Taemin first met him when he was thirteen years old and he saw him every single day of his life for the next ten years, and now ten years after that, he’s too shy to look Jonghyun in the eye somehow. The difference between then and now isn’t that Jonghyun has kissed and touched and fucked every inch of his body, at least not only. It’s those three little words Jonghyun has said and meant a million times over the years, something Taemin has known for as long as he’s known Jonghyun.

_I love you. I love you. I love you._

Right now he doesn’t know anything. The headphones clamp down over his ears, hiding how red they’re getting, and his own voice sounds so weird when he tests the mic, small and faraway. It’s worse when they launch into the first take. Taemin has sung this song so many times now they all blur together, and there’s no excuse left for him to flub the lyrics, go off key, for him to sound like _that._ Whenever he looks up at Jonghyun through the window, he never knows if he’s seeing hyung or PD-nim, and whenever he calls him that, it feels like a dirty secret, like he’s naked under the bright lights of the sound booth, back on Jonghyun’s dick. When Jonghyun calls him Taemin-ssi, it just feels cold.

From the top, Taemin-ssi. From the heart. Let’s not go through it line-by-line, I don’t think that works for you. Just think of it as a release. Let it all out. Everything inside you. Besides your frustration at me, you can do that later~. It’s not an angry song. It’s not a sad one, either. It’s the kind of feeling you can’t put into words. Even the lyrics mean nothing without you singing them. Again. Again. Again.

“Again?”

With the end of each take, it gets harder and harder for Taemin to make eye contact again. This time when he raises his head, though, somehow Jonghyun is shaking his head at him. No. “Let’s take a break and then move on to the next song.”

Taemin has been clutching the mic for so long his fingers ache, but he’s scared if he lets go, Jonghyun will see how badly his hands are shaking. And he has to hang onto something anyway as he gets out, “I can do better, hyung.” He realizes his mistake too late, but he doesn’t need to be fixing it, either. “PD-nim.”

“You think so?” Jonghyun’s face goes strange for a second and the bottom of Taemin’s stomach falls out, trying to read it, before he breaks into a smile. “I don’t.”

Does he mean…?

“That was what you wanted.”

Vulnerability.

Jonghyun’s smile widens. “Mm.”

“I made so many mistakes,” Taemin says.

“The point was never to perfect your vocals,” Jonghyun reminds him, gently enough that it just hurts more. “It was to make you sound like yourself.”

“That makes no sense—” _hyung._ “PD-nim. It’s my voice, it always sounds like me. And you told me not to sing badly, you said there were better ways.”

Taemin doesn’t even know who he’s trying to argue with, Jonghyun, sitting there smiling at him after hours and hours of taking every last thing Taemin had, or the part of himself that wants to curl up and give in and take Jonghyun’s word for it. He keeps his head up somehow, struggling to hide the look on his face when Jonghyun will have read it in half a second.

“Not perfect doesn’t mean not good, Taeminnie. That was your best take. Ask the engineers if you don’t believe me.”

Taemin holds Jonghyun’s eyes. Breathes in, breathes out. Lets his hands fall from the microphone.

_Look only at me._

“I believe you.”

When Jonghyun plays the song back for him later, much much later, after the last engineer has shuffled out and Manager hyung is still fast asleep on the couch outside, Taemin tries to hear what Jonghyun hears. Jonghyun doesn’t need to remind him that the mixing is rough and unfinished, that they still need to double track his voice for the chorus, tweak a few things here and there, and on and on and on and on, but Taemin waits for him to fall silent, hanging onto his voice before he finally listens to his own instead. From this side of the glass, he sounds and looks and feels like Jonghyunnie hyung again. The Taemin in this song must sound like Taeminnie to Jonghyun. If that’s enough for him, just this once, it should be enough for Taemin, too.

When Jonghyun finally speaks again, it’s to say, “You look tired again.”

“You do too.”

The circles under his eyes are darker than they were the night before last. If Taemin reached up to rub at them again, Jonghyun might lean into his touch, and if Taemin asked him to promise again tonight that he’ll sleep, he’d promise to try. And none of that will change the fact that it’s Taemin’s fault, or that they’ll probably be darker still tomorrow.

Taemin feels Jonghyun’s eyes on his face long before he raises his head to meet them. Jonghyun gives him a smile, small and wan but real. “Is something wrong? You didn’t make fun of me once today.”

Taemin’s heart lurches, but instead of climbing to his feet and collecting his things, putting his head down and hiding, he tries to smile back. “You already guessed it, hyung. Just tired.”

Jonghyun’s expression shifts subtly. When he reaches up to pet Taemin’s hair, same as he’s done for twenty years, Taemin’s eyes almost slide shut at the feel of it.

“Hyung isn’t stupid, Taemin-ah. I can always tell with you.” Jonghyun cups his cheek, turning Taemin towards him fully. Taemin could stay just like this forever, Jonghyun’s hand so big and warm against his skin, but Jonghyun lets him go, fingers trailing across Taemin’s shoulder before dropping away. “Is it Jonginnie again? Jonginnie’s girlfriend.”

The easier answer is yes and the harder one is no, but they’re both shades of the truth. But how did Jonghyun know to ask? How does he always know? If he can just tell, why can’t Taemin tell with him, too.

“Do I really complain about them that much?”

Taemin isn’t looking for a real answer, but Jonghyun gives one to him anyway, along with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “It’s the things you don’t say as much as the things you do.”

If Taemin stayed right here forever and stared into Jonghyun’s eyes, looked at him the same way he’s been looking at him since before he even understood what it meant, looked and looked, Jonghyun would never hear _I love you._ Otherwise he would have heard it years ago, and the past two months would never have happened. One way or the other, everything would be different. Jonghyun would never have asked Taemin to take Bora’s place in Japan, or maybe he would have planned the trip for them to go together in the beginning. Jonghyun would have found it in himself to refuse Taemin when he asked him to produce this album, or maybe Taemin would have let his career go like Jongin has, too busy planning the rest of his life with Jonghyun to fight SM anymore. Jonghyun would never have touched him if he knew Taemin’s heart, or maybe he would have waited forever to get around to it, working up from holding hands to kissing with tongue and then finally, after Taemin spent months teasing him every way he knew how, sex that was so much softer and gentler and slower than porn told Taemin it would be.

But Taemin has spent fifteen years not saying it out loud, and these two months happened like they did, and Taemin would rather die than go back to that night in Japan and roll over and dream of Jonghyun instead of leaning in to kiss him.

“Jonginnie wants to get together for New Year,” Taemin gets out somehow.

Jonghyun frowns. “SM is making Yena-ssi work?”

Taemin can tell the exact moment Jonghyun hears how his own words sound, but before he can make it worse trying to fix it, he has to head him off. “It’s not that. He wants me to bring someone too.”

Those words hit Jonghyun’s face too, this expression Taemin is too scared to read, but his voice sounds so normal when he says it. “A date.”

Taemin’s comes out in this awful rush, “He says it doesn’t have to be. Anyone is fine, as long as it’s not Kwonho or Moongyu,” and then it’s too late to take any of it back. Jonghyun’s hand makes him so dizzy as it lands on his head, ruffling his hair, and he sits there dumbly while Jonghyun nods and hitches a smile onto his face and turns his attention back to the control panel. The first few notes of the song shatter the silence between them into pieces, sharp and sudden.

Taemin’s heart is in his throat and he can’t breathe and, “What are you doing?”

_Say you’ll come with me. Please, hyung. Please._

“Going to noona’s house with my mom.”

Is that no? It must be. For the first time in his life, Taemin is learning how that feels. He should have learned a long, long time ago, and then maybe it wouldn’t have hurt this much.

“Sounds nice.” His voice doesn’t. When it catches in his throat, Taemin clears it and tries again. “I was going to do the same with my parents and hyung.” And again. “I always used Jonginnie for this kind of thing, but now he’s the one making me do it.” Where is Manager hyung? Of course he has to sleep later than ever, the one time he would have killed for him to come in here and interrupt them, save him from saying, “I just want my best friend back.”

He’s not going to cry. Over what? This is so stupid. After twenty years of holding it in, he’s not. How hard can it be to hold it in some more?

“Tell him that,” is all Jonghyun has for him.

Really hard. Jonghyun takes one look at him, and Taemin has to look away, blinking fast, but then he tries to talk and he can’t help how it comes out, wrenched and miserable. “She makes him happy, hyung.”

All Taemin ever makes anything is difficult. Jonghyun sighs and then his arm comes around Taemin’s shoulders, pulling him into his side, squeezing him close, and Taemin has no way to tell him he’s making it worse. That it’s not even that, it’s not even Jongin, he doesn’t need Jonghyun to say, “You think that’s like asking him to break up with her, in other words. It’s not, Taeminnie. At least it shouldn’t be.”

_It’s you, hyung._

It’s Taemin’s whole life. It was leading up to this moment, and he didn’t even let Jonghyun say no, the way he never let himself say I love you. He has no right to cry, not yet. Not ever. Taemin scrubs at his eyes before his tears can fall, and forces himself to pull away and smile, even if Jonghyun will know it’s fake, but maybe that’s worse, because he can see Jonghyun’s face again. The look he put on it.

The last thing Taemin should be doing is making it into a joke. “I don’t know if he’d choose me over her, anyway~”

Jonghyun doesn’t laugh.

“I would have,” he says.

“What?”

“If you’d ever asked me, I would have.”

And then Taemin would have had to live with himself. Even now, he has to. He’s being so stupid and selfish, pushing and pulling, crying and laughing, saying one thing and meaning another, telling himself to let go and then holding on tighter. And now Jonghyun just put himself out there for him to take, the same way he has since long before Taemin knew how easily he could hurt him, and all Taemin can do is sit here and watch him stand and gather his things and look anywhere but Taemin’s face. Jonghyun drops a kiss onto the top of his head on his way out, there and gone, but before he can turn the door handle, Taemin’s hand shoots out to stop him, fingers hooking in his sleeve.

“Hyung.” For one long moment, it’s the only word Taemin knows. “Hyung.”

Jonghyun turns back to him, and now it’s up to Taemin to raise his eyes to his face again. To say the words he should have started with:

“Go with me.”


	4. Chapter 4

When Taemin wakes up he’s…alone. No lips on his nape, arm thrown over his waist, no Jonghyun, warm and solid at his back. He spreads his arms and legs out. Still alone. Even Jonghyun’s warmth is gone. No point in opening his eyes then, nothing to see. He can just go back to sleep until his alarm rings.

Except it’s getting light out. And he smells food.

Taemin rolls over and opens his eyes. His pajamas are still on the floor from last night. The first few times Jonghyun stayed over Taemin went back to sleeping naked, in case wearing them made Jonghyun think he was too tired for sex, but that was before he knew Jonghyun had a thing for them. As Taemin slips them on, his stomach tightens and his heart races ahead. Maybe all he’ll have to do is walk out into the kitchen and Jonghyun will undo all these buttons again, yank until they pop right off, pull Taemin’s his pants down around his ass or leave them hanging off his ankles as his dick slides back inside Taemin, where it belongs.

Yeah. Taemin’s brain takes so much longer to start working than the rest of his body these days. It’s not his fault, though. Last night Jonghyun fucked every last thought out of his head that wasn’t of him, and this morning all he has to do is stand there in Taemin’s kitchen, watching while the soup he made last night froths away on the stove, and Taemin is right back where he started. He’s already dressed for work, dark hair dripping onto his shirt, wet from the shower he took without Taemin, and when Taemin kisses him good morning, he tastes like toothpaste. Maybe if Taemin had gotten up earlier, he would have still tasted like Taemin’s dick instead, and he would pull Taemin into his arms instead of pulling away at the first press of their lips, swatting his ass and lowering the heat before anything bubbles over.

“Go shower, I’ll wait for you,” Jonghyun says. When Taemin follows him over to the stove dumbly, putting his arms around his middle and laying his cheek against his shoulder, he wavers. “Unless you want to eat first?”

Taemin lets him think that all the way over to the table, until Jonghyun lays the soup down in the middle of the table and takes the place he set for himself, and finally Taemin can claim his. The air whooshes out of Jonghyun’s body as he sinks down into his lap, this long low groan, but he’s the one who says Taemin doesn’t weigh anything, and he’s also the one who keeps feeding Taemin two meals a day when he’s only supposed to be eating one. Taemin shifts his weight, gets as comfortable as he can with Jonghyun so warm and solid beneath him, Jonghyun’s arms coming up around his waist, holding him close, his breath tickling the skin of Taemin’s neck. Taemin’s catches in his throat.

He doesn’t have to remind Jonghyun, “You said you like smelling yourself on me.”

Jonghyun noses into his hair and breathes deep, lips brushing Taemin’s ear as he says just as pointlessly, “I won’t be able to from the control room.”

That’s later. This is now.

“You can from here.”

Taemin turns towards Jonghyun, finding his mouth with his own. This time Jonghyun falls into it, slow and soft and dirty sweet, gasping when he nips at his bottom lip, then opening his mouth for his tongue, rubbing his own up against it. Last night his stubble burned Taemin’s thighs, but he shaved it off already, skin so soft and smooth under Taemin’s hands. His hair is even softer somehow, like silk through Taemin’s fingers. As Jonghyun starts to draw away he knots his fingers in it, desperate to keep his mouth on his, to feel this feeling a little longer, but it’s not like it will go away when Jonghyun slips one hand up to cup his cheek and Taemin opens his eyes to see him again. It gets worse. Better. To know which, Taemin would have to know anything, and Jonghyun makes that so hard. Impossible, when his mouth curves into a smile.

“Thank you for remembering that I exist,” Jonghyun says. “Whenever I cook for you I’m creating my own rival.”

Taemin nudges his nose against his. “You can feed me something else.”

All he has to do is shift his weight in Jonghyun’s lap, and he feels it pressing into his thigh, just barely hardening. Jonghyun makes this noise, fingers clenching in the fabric of Taemin’s top instead of sliding under his waistband. He’s being good, so it’s okay if Taemin is bad. He kisses down Jonghyun’s neck, wet and soft and lingering, filling himself up with Jonghyun’s taste, the scent of his aftershave, the sound of his voice, whatever he says.

“We can’t, Taemin-ah. No time.”

When Taemin bites his neck his breathing hisses, before his hand slides up Taemin’s spine and sinks into Taemin’s hair, tugging his head back so that they’re face-to-face again. He should know that just makes it worse. He knows just how beautiful he is, Taemin knows he knows from years and years of him posting thirst traps online and setting them for Taemin everywhere. Eye fucking him through the control room window all day, driving Taemin home in his stupidly sexy car, leaving the bathroom door open whenever he showers and wandering out wet and naked on the nights he doesn’t lay sprawled out on Taemin’s bed waiting for Taemin to undress him, cooking him dinner and breakfast, falling asleep inside him and holding him all night and waking him up with kisses and blow jobs, just breathing Taemin’s air. Just being here.

“Why didn’t you get me up?” Taemin says helplessly.

“I did,” Jonghyun retorts, leaning in to bite Taemin’s bottom lip, hot flicker of pain-pleasure. “Twice. You fell back asleep.”

Taemin is his own worst enemy, and maybe Jonghyun’s too. Taemin has never woken up first, and the dark circles under his eyes haven’t disappeared since he started sleeping here. When Taemin rubs his thumbs over them Jonghyun doesn’t blink. “Did you sleep at all?”

“Some,” Jonghyun says, before he smiles again, leaning in for another kiss. “Sometimes my heart beats so fast when I hold you that it’s hard to.”

Now Taemin’s is going a million miles an hour. He chases Jonghyun as he draws away, squeezing his eyes shut tight, opening his mouth wide for Jonghyun’s tongue, anything to stop the words in his head from coming out, _i love you i love you i love you—_

Jonghyun’s phone buzzes behind them. That works too. Or not. When Taemin breaks their kiss, gasping for air, mouths still crushed together, waiting for Jonghyun to lean around him and grab it, go back into work mode, Jonghyun reaches up to hold his face instead. Two seconds of eye contact and Taemin can feel himself start to break, his heart, his brain, his body, everything but his voice, because somehow it’s saying, “Hyung…”

His phone buzzes again. Taemin’s brain jams up but his body moves on its own, twisting around to pick it up. He flicks through the password without thinking, before he feels Jonghyun’s look and tells him, “I know my own birthday, hyung.”

Jonghyun should probably be telling him in return, _Just because you know doesn’t give you the right to look,_ not humming into Taemin’s skin, kissing his nape, slipping one hand up Taemin’s shirt to span his fingers over his stomach. Taemin’s on his last brain cell when he recognizes Manager hyung’s name, followed by his own.

_taeminnies phone is off_

_or dead or lost_

_he says he cant lose weight but he loses everything else so easily_

_i dont know how he gets up on time on his own_

When nights with Jonghyun stopped being enough, Taemin lied and told Manager hyung he’d start walking to work, he needed the exercise, so that he and Jonghyun could have mornings too. Manager hyung never told him he’d started texting Jonghyun. Anyway, the important thing.

“Meeting with Creative got moved up to Thursday this week instead of next,” Taemin reads out loud, before Jonghyun bites down on his neck and slides his hand further up his shirt to pinch Taemin’s nipple, and his voice trails off into a moan. That’s the day after tomorrow. 

“Good,” Jonghyun says. “We won’t finish before then.”

The week before last, Creative threw them a lifeline and okayed one more song out of all the ones they’d submitted before, and between Jonghyun fiddling with the arrangement and Taemin burning through take after take, they’ve stretched it out until now, all while waiting for Creative to approve more tracks. This after they wasted a whole recording day going through the vaults with the A&R Team, turning every song they heard over and over to see how it could fit into Taemin’s album. How it could fit Taemin. That night Jonghyun took him home and Taemin asked him up, and they did the same thing with the songs in Taemin’s folder, lying on Taemin’s bed fully clothed. At least for as long as Taemin could last with Jonghyun’s warmth pressing into his side, his face and his smile and his voice, soft and low in Taemin’s ear and pouring pure sex out of his phone. Then he hit shuffle and rode Jonghyun’s dick until he had Jonghyun gasping and moaning his name over the lyrics. And now Taemin is on Jonghyun’s dick again, hot and thick and hard against his ass, and again, things need to go back to being serious.

“Do you think it means they’ve already made up their mind?” he makes himself say, but only because that’s easier than getting up and showering and having this conversation in the car.

“They would have regardless, Taeminnie, that’s just how they operate. All we can do is try and make them change it.”

Jonghyun sounds like he does in the studio, calm, even, all while he’s playing with Taemin’s nipple, rolling it between his fingers, tweaking it, rubbing it, and somehow that just sends Taemin hotter. Makes it even harder to think.

“I should be better at that by now.” That. Everything. His career. His entire life. “I can get them from maybe to yes, but I’ve never gotten them from no to anything.”

Jonghyun laughs of all things, squeezing Taemin tight and leaning in to press a kiss to his neck. “Not counting all the times they wanted to say it but couldn’t, looking at you.”

And now all of the sudden Taemin’s heart hurts, too many feelings for his body to hold. He slips his hand down to cover Jonghyun’s, lacing their fingers together. “They’re not you, hyung.”

“I’ve never even wanted to,” Jonghyun confesses, lips brushing his skin with each word. When he pushes his dick into Taemin’s ass, Taemin pushes back, helpless to stop himself, since it’s taking every single thing he has not to drag Jonghyun’s hand down to his dick. Even the five seconds it would take to get up and yank his pants down and undo Jonghyun’s fly is too much, especially with Jonghyun randomly asking him things that don’t matter like, “What are you going to wear?” Clothes? The first thing he can find in his closet, the easiest thing for Jonghyun to take off later. “Tomorrow, I mean.”

Oh.

Taemin was so stuck on the day after that he forgot about that part. Tomorrow. New Year. Jongin and Yena. Dinner.

The thing they’ve spent the past two weeks not talking about.

Taemin ignores the feeling rushing in and out and says, “Don’t worry about it. Jonginnie said it’s not that fancy.”

Jonghyun draws back to look at him, what little of his face he can see. Taemin will turn to him in a minute, once he knows it’s safe.

“You’ve never been? You always eat together.”

For the first time in his life, Jonghyun asked an easy question.

“Yena-ssi is probably the one who picked it. He recommended it to me, he said her family loves it. They do snow crab.”

Which Yena is allergic to. Snow crab isn’t the only food that’s good for New Year, and she should’ve picked something she’d like, not something she thought everyone else would. Taemin probably won’t be able to taste his food, anyway.

Jonghyun flips his hand over, playing with Taemin’s fingers, filling his heart up so full he can feel tiny cracks forming. “Hyung would have taken you there.”

Like a date? Or like he’s bought Taemin food for the last twenty years of their lives.

“It was when we were in Japan,” Taemin blurts out, and then, “I haven’t told him about us.”

Two seconds of silence, and Taemin can’t take it anymore. Before Jonghyun can even think to answer, he shuts his eyes tight and leans back to fit their mouths together clumsily, slightest movement that ends with Jonghyun’s dick pressing right up against his hole. Taemin’s not even sure whose moan that is, him or Jonghyun’s, who moves again first, whose pleasure is sending him hotter, his own or Jonghyun’s, but it’s Jonghyun who reaches up to cup his face, breaking their kiss to stare into it.

“You tell each other everything.”

Taemin rocks against him, so desperate so suddenly he can taste it, skin buzzing, stomach tightening up, head this white echoing blank. He has to say something that makes sense, something that’s not _fuck me_ or _make me forget real life_ or _I never told him I was in love with you, I’m scared of what he’ll say now. He’ll tell me to stop before we hurt each other. What if we already have?_

“Not this kind of thing.”

Taemin doesn’t even know what that is anymore, just what it isn’t. Not dating or romance. Not love, maybe, at least not like that. Not just sex, either. A fantasy? Fantasies. The dirty ones Jonghyun tells him freely and drags out of Taemin with his lips and teeth and tongue, and the ones Taemin isn’t supposed to have. The ones Jonghyun can’t give him. They’re buried so much deeper inside Taemin, parts of himself he’s hidden from for years, but every time Jonghyun touches him or smiles at him or makes him come, he gets closer to finding them too. Like Jonghyun getting a parking spot under his own name instead of using the one meant for guests, Jonghyun’s clothes taking over his closet, his things cluttering Taemin’s bathroom instead of zipped up in his overnight bag, his groceries filling up his fridge, just him filling Taemin’s days for the rest of his life. Filling this emptiness inside him.

Jonghyun lets Taemin lean in to kiss him again, tongues and teeth, lets him move on him, white hot friction that has Taemin burning with need, lets him say, “I need you inside me, hyung, please,” until his fingers dig into his hips, tight enough to bruise. For one second Taemin is so sure he’s going to give it to him, make him sit on his dick or hoist him up onto the table, send the food crashing to the floor and have Taemin instead. Then he stands, setting Taemin on his feet. The ground is so solid his legs almost give out from under him, and he’s still figuring out how to breathe on his own while Jonghyun turns away and leans across the table to wave his hand over the soup.

“It got cold,” he says. And then, back turned to Taemin as he searches for the lid to the pot, like they’re not both stupidly hard and aching for each other, “We can eat it tonight. If we’re any later I’ll have to drop you off a block from the studio, or your manager will know you lied to him.”

He heads over to the fridge, leaving Taemin standing there with his dick straining in his pants and his heart still beating so fast it feels like it will break, waiting for Jonghyun’s touch to fade from his skin and this feeling to slow down enough for him to tell what it is. He can do that in the shower, and then in the car, and then the studio.

_I didn’t lie to Jonginnie. I’m not lying to you. Or myself. Why does it feel like I am?_

That night, Jonghyun drops Taemin off instead of staying over in the end. Rather than idling out front he parks in the garage, and he lets Taemin kiss him completely breathless, but after all that, he still says good night and watches Taemin go up by himself. Taemin has all night to lie awake alone and think about what he could have said or done to have brought him to his bed, but maybe those were all reasons that made Jonghyun stay away. Could he be tired of Taemin? Or tired of pleasing him. Tired of everything always being about work or sex, Taemin’s career or Taemin’s body, no in-between. Just tired. But then in the morning Jonghyun shows up in the nicest clothes he has that’s not a suit. He might have spent all night digging through his closet, draped things over himself to check how they looked in the mirror, laid them out before he went to bed. Taemin did all the same things, blanketing his floor with things that were too ugly or faded, things that would make Kibum’s eyes bleed, so out of fashion even he could tell, things that didn’t match, things that made him look fat, things he remembered wearing on dates with other guys, things that he’d worn on one of the million nights Jonghyun bought him dinner to console or spoil him, a dongsaeng and not a date. In the morning he just picked the first thing up off his floor and tried not to think about it.

That’s so much harder now.

Recording crawls, right up until the engineers start going home. Taemin has no way to stop them, not when it’s New Year and they’ve been working late for weeks, and he can’t think of a single thing that could keep Jonghyun here through dinner. And even if he drags it out, pushes for one more take, just one more, I can get it right, hyung, even if he starts an argument about the mix or asks a question about the arrangement…Jonghyun will just end up speeding to make sure they make it in time.

Traffic is terrible as it is. Jonghyun talks to him normally about a million different things, his noona’s kids and Kibum’s puppies and the weirdo script Minho turned down, while Taemin presses his face to the glass of his window and tries to remember how to breathe and wishes they were headed in the opposite direction, back towards his place. It’s too late to get out of it, way, way too late. Back when Jongin asked him, he should have said, _I didn’t get to spend New Year with my parents last year, let’s get together some other time._ When he said he’d ask one of the hyungs, he should have meant Minho or Jinki or Kibum. He should have told Jongin twenty years ago, _I like Jonghyunnie hyung,_ and told Jonghyun weeks ago, _I want this to be a date. I want you to be my boyfriend._

“You’re so quiet,” Jonghyun says, glancing over at him as they coast to another red light. “Are you saving up on words?”

He has nothing else to do with them now.

Out loud he says, “I have nothing to say that’s not about work.”

Jonghyun reaches over to pet his hair clumsily. “Hyung will do most of the talking.”

“You always do.”

He expects it when Jonghyun’s hand slips down to pinch his cheek, but he can’t keep this strange, unwilling smile from forming at his fingertips. When Jonghyun takes his touch away, it’s all Taemin can do to stop himself from grabbing his hand and holding onto it forever.

“It’ll be nice, Taeminnie. You love snow crab.” Jonghyun hesitates, almost like he’s not sure whether he should even be saying this. Whether he wants to. “If it’s not, we can stop somewhere else on the way home.”

_Let’s turn around now, hyung. We can get tteokbokki, if you want, or just go through a drive through somewhere if you’re hungry. If you’re not, we can go straight home. I’ll be so good for you, I’ll do everything, I’ll let you do whatever you want. When I come, I’ll tell you I love you, same as you did, and I’ll mean it._

But again, he can’t say any of that. “Not everything is about food for me, hyung.”

Jonghyun’s mouth curves, that slow, slow smile that makes Taemin burn, even numb with nerves. “Then you can have me instead.”

Taemin smushes his face into his window, like ice against this skin. “I would anyway.”

“In the car if it’s really bad,” Jonghyun goes on like he hasn’t said anything. “Otherwise I can wait long enough to fuck you on the floor of the entryway.” His smile widens, almost goofily. “You wore that so I’d want to get you naked faster, don’t think I don’t know.”

_I tried, hyung. It might not look like it, but I did. I’m trying really hard._

It sounds like more lies, even in his head.

They make it to the restaurant with five minutes to spare in the end, but Jongin texts him as the valet takes the car to tell him that they’re already seated.

_yena wanted to get the best table while it was open_

_next to the window on the second floor_

_just ask for us at the door, otherwise youll get lost_

Jonghyun wouldn’t, but it’s easier for Taemin to just do as he’s told. His brain is missing in action again and his hands are sweaty. And shaking, which he only realizes as he reaches for the door. Jonghyun beats him to it, holding it open for him and ushering him inside with the same hand he uses to make him come every night, and then reception is right there. His mouth has gone so dry he’s scared words won’t come out, but it only takes a few before one of the hostesses leads them in, across the dining room to the narrow set of stairs. They seem endless from the bottom, but in no time at all they’re at the top.

He sees them before Jongin can wave them over. Yena half-rises from her seat as they approach, nodding so deeply she’s almost bowing, hair falling into her face. The first time Taemin saw her, all he could think was that she was as far from Jongin’s type as could be, but maybe he never really had one. He always dated the girls around him, and Yena fits that as much as it girls and girl group members ever did, it just took Jongin until the day they walked back to SM together to know it. When she straightens Taemin’s only thought now is that she’s really pretty. And probably really nervous. And she’s smiling. He should be smiling back.

Jongin starts to stand too, before Jonghyun pulls Taemin’s chair out, giving Taemin an excuse to get his legs out from under him before they crumple up. Once he takes it he’s not sure how he’ll ever get up again, and somehow that’s worse. He and Jonghyun would have made it home by now if they’d turned around, but it’s too late for him now. It already was weeks and weeks ago. Now he has to get through this however he can. It’s okay if he can’t feel his face and the world squeezes in on him, even with the window right next to him, fluffy white snow falling past them to blanket the city street below. His ears rush in and out as he forces himself to turn away from it, just in time for Yena to sit down again and Jonghyun to take a seat next to him.

Jongin sinks back down across from him, too, saying, “Jonghyun hyung, Yena. Yena, hyung.”

“We’ve met before,” Jonghyun says, smiling over at her. “Maybe you don’t remember me, but I remember you. You hid at your desk when we came to sing happy birthday to your manager, I had to bring you cake. And then you wouldn’t look at me.” Taemin doesn’t remember any of this, and the look on Yena’s face says she’d rather she didn’t either. Jonghyun’s smile widens, eyes crinkling up. “Was I that scary?”

She shakes her head, eyes widening. “I was a fan.”

Since when? Jongin never told him that. When Taemin glances over at him his eyes are fixed on Yena, stupidly soft smile on his face.

“Was?” Jonghyun teases her gently, glancing between the two of them. “I guess you changed teams~”

“No, that’s different,” Yena blurts out. When Jonghyun laughs, she smiles like she can’t help herself. “I’m an official fan club member and everything.”

“Then calling me oppa should be more comfortable than Jonghyun-ssi.” Jonghyun turns to Jongin. “Can I ask who her bias is~?”

Jongin tells him immediately, “Taeminnie.”

What?

“Me, really?” pops out of Taemin’s mouth. That’s better than the single other thought in his head: _but she hates me._ Jongin looks as surprised that he doesn’t know and Jonghyun laughs at him, but Yena inclines her head at him, this awkward half-smile on her face. Taemin nods back dumbly. “Thank you.”

“Taeminnie’s mine, too,” Jonghyun cuts in, pressing his shoulder into Taemin’s, so warm and solid, the one thing in Taemin’s world he knows is real right now. “He’s not just acting surprised, he really is. I’ve been telling him forever, but somehow he doesn’t know how beautiful he is~”

“It’s not about looks for me,” Yena says haltingly. “More like…his aura? Whenever I was having a hard time, watching him dance gave me so much energy.” She stops abruptly as she catches up with her own words, remembers Taemin can hear them. She turns to him again, raising her eyes to meet his finally. “I didn’t realize how hard you had it too until I joined the company.”

Jonghyun’s hand finds Taemin’s under the table. Taemin should pull away, but instead he hangs onto him, lacing their fingers together and letting Jonghyun say the same stupid stuff he’s said Taemin’s whole life, like it doesn’t mean something else now.

“For me it was about both. His beauty is more than skin deep. Before I met him, I never thought there could be someone who was the exact same inside as they were on the outside.”

“He was so perfect he made everything look easy,” Yena agrees, before catching herself again and saying to Taemin, “Sorry, you probably hate hearing that.”

Normally, yes. Right now he should probably be hating himself. He was so sure she hated him, that it was her and not him, that he’d tried his hardest. Maybe he didn’t try at all.

“Jonginnie must have told you how not perfect I am by now,” Taemin tries now, but she shakes her head quickly, earrings tinkling.

“He’s never said anything bad about you.”

Taemin didn’t mean it like that, he just meant, “If fans saw half the things he has, my image would be ruined.” He drags his eyes off her face without waiting to see where that lands, shooting Jongin a look instead. “You say them all to my face, I guess.”

 _You talk about me with her?_ If Jongin senses the question it doesn’t show in his face, and it’s a dumb one anyway. Somehow Yena is his fan and he’s Jongin’s best friend, and if Jongin’s only stuck to good things, that means he must’ve kept almost everything back.

Jonghyun squeezes his hand under the table.

“Even his mistakes are cute, right? That’s how it is as a hyung, I always thought it must be the same as a friend.” Too bad it’s not the same for Taemin himself, and this dinner was his biggest one yet. That or bringing Jonghyun to it. When he slips his hand free of Jonghyun’s hold, Jonghyun doesn’t fight him, hand lingering on Taemin’s thigh, eyes lingering on his face. “He’s even cuter when he’s embarrassed~.”

_To you, hyung. Not to anyone else._

The waitress comes and saves Taemin before he can find a retort that’s safe to say out loud. Yena asks around three times to make sure before she orders for them all, and Taemin spends all that time reminding himself that Jonghyun has said those kinds of things and stared at him in this exact way for years. Nothing will look or sound or feel any different to Jongin, except maybe Taemin himself, if he doesn’t start acting normal soon. When Jongin’s foot pushes into his under the table, he starts, eyes snapping up to Jongin’s face.

“You really didn’t know Yena liked you?” Jongin says. “I thought I told you.”

“You told me her friend did,” Taemin says without thinking, and then he does and dies all over again. Jongin has no right to be making that confused face at him again when he’s the one who tried to set them up. The waitress leaves and Yena falls silent and Jonghyun turns back to him just in time for him to add, “With the poster. You said that it got them talking.”

“That’s because I had the same one,” Yena tells him, catching on. “Oppa told you about Yongwook?”

Why couldn’t his parents have named him something that could pass for a girl? But maybe it’s okay, maybe he’ll live after all. Before Jongin can even answer, Jonghyun says normally, “Taeminnie is popular with men, too. Out of all of us, he has the most male fans.”

That’s right, fan. That’s all. Taemin already told Jongin that, he told him he wasn’t interested in meeting him as a man, he has no right to make that face at him. Taemin knows what’s coming next, he has to shut him up somehow, think of something, anything—

“How is that you have so many to choose from, but you always pick the wrong ones?”

Taemin’s stomach twists viciously, and for a second he feels so sick with nerves he can’t get the words out. “I broke up with them all, isn’t that enough?” And then, looking anywhere but Jonghyun, “I don’t have time to date right now, anyway.”

“Don’t tell me what you tell your mom,” Jongin says. “You dated when you were way busier before.”

“He’s not just saying that, Jongin-ah.” Jonghyun’s hand lands on Taemin’s thigh, sudden and heavy, warm through to his skin. “I keep him really busy.”

Water. At least if Taemin doesn’t knock the glass over before he can even take a sip, he’s shaking so badly somehow. He closes his fingers around it, like ice against the fire in his skin.

“Oppa said that you two were working together,” Yena says to Jonghyun.

“If that’s what you want to call it. I just do whatever Taeminnie wants~”

“What are you talking about, it’s the other way around,” Taemin retorts before he can even think, eyes shooting up to Jonghyun’s face.

Jonghyun’s mouth curls into the tiniest smirk, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Is it?”

Jonghyun slides his palm up Taemin’s thigh, fingertips trailing along the inside of it. He left a mark there the night before last, spent an eternity working it into Taemin’s skin, lips and teeth and tongue, ignoring all Taemin’s pleas, his hands tugging at his hair. Closing his legs does no good, it just traps Jonghyun’s hand between them, and when he tugs it free, Jonghyun laces their fingers together, stroking his thumb over his skin, and Taemin is right back where he started. Except he’s dizzier and more out of breath and his heart is pounding so loudly all three of them should hear, and there’s nothing in his head he can say to change the subject besides the things he can’t say out loud.

_Don’t do this to me right now, hyung. Please._

It’s Jongin who says it.

“I thought you would help me, at least. Be honest, hyung. You hated all his boyfriends too, right?”

Jonghyun goes deadly still against Taemin’s side.

“He doesn’t love himself like I love him, so I would pick for him better than he could.” He says it so slowly, carefully, like he’s turned the words over and over in his head, but the smile he flashes at Jongin is so fake it turns Taemin’s insides black. “Is that what you mean?”

It’s so bright it blinds Jongin. How else could he reply so normally, “If he meets him and dislikes him, then I get it. But he has to meet him to dislike him.”

“Yongwook is really nice, Taemin-ssi.”

Yena only says it to be helpful, but it would kill Taemin to try and smile back at her this time, especially when Jongin says, “See if you can find a picture of him in your phone. The way I said it last time made it sound like he was ugly.”

“Getting Taeminnie where he’s weak, huh.” Yena falters, glancing up at Jonghyun halfway through reaching for her bag. Jonghyun turns his smile on her. “He goes by looks.”

Heat rises in Taemin’s face and the bottom falls out of his stomach, but this time when he tries to yank his hand away, Jonghyun’s grip tightens, crushing it in his. His chest is closing up even tighter, this awful grinding feeling where his insides used to be.

Somehow he finds his voice, somehow it’s saying, “It’s fine, you don’t have to. I told Jonginnie already, I don’t want to mess with my fans—”

“Meet with him, Taemin-ah. What harm can it do?” Jonghyun says over him. “Maybe Yena-ssi has a friend she could introduce me to, too~”

“You aren’t dating anyone?” Yena says, surprised.

As her words hit him, Jongin’s face falls open, then tightens with worry. Before he can even try and fix things, Jonghyun is there.

“It’s hard to believe, right~? If you knew me better it’d be really easy.” Somehow that cuts deeper than everything he just said to hurt Taemin, rips his heart in half, but it keeps beating somehow, and in the next second Jonghyun is lying to Yena, reassuring her, “I’m kidding.”

“Hyung broke up with his girlfriend last month,” Taemin shouldn’t say. He shouldn’t even be breathing Jonghyun’s air, but Jonghyun won’t _let go._ “He was thinking of marrying her.”

Yena takes that in, and then she’s saying so fast the words blur together, “I’m sorry for asking, I’m sorry, I didn’t know. And I’m sorry to hear that, too,” until Jongin lays his hand over hers on the table, and she remembers to breathe.

“You don’t need to apologize, I’m the one who should,” Jongin says, more gently than Taemin’s ever heard him. “I didn’t tell her about Bora-ssi, I didn’t realize it would come up. Sorry, hyung.”

“Don’t be,” Jonghyun says shortly. “Either of you.”

Taemin doesn’t know how deep he has to dig to find a real smile for them, but the minute he sees it he can’t look anymore, burning in shame and anger. It wasn’t meant for his eyes. 

“Taeminnie should be. Think before you talk, Taemin-ah~” Jongin says.

He’s making another face at Taemin, and if his brain were working he’d be able to read it in half a second. Instead he sits there dumbly as Jongin reaches across the table and pinches his cheek. He should do it harder, it should hurt more.

“Taeminnie was the one who got me through it.” Like that. By the time Taemin can think through the pain and the bottom drops out of his world, it’s too late. Jonghyun is already going on, “We broke up right before we’d planned to go to Japan together, and Taeminnie went with me instead.”

Jongin blinks. “Last month?”

“Taeminnie didn’t tell you? We went around the same time you two did.”

Jongin’s eyes shoot to Taemin’s face. _What is hyung talking about?_

The noise swells around them, this awful non-silence rushing in and out.

_I’m sorry I lied to you, Jonginnie. I had a good reason, I promise, so please don’t ask—_

“You must be really close,” Yena says into it, voice so normal it leaves Taemin dizzy with relief. Or maybe that’s because he can’t breathe. “I took a trip with my friends after I broke up with my college boyfriend and it was really healing. Just to the countryside to stay with her aunt, but still.”

“I went on a trip with Jonginnie once too, after he broke up with Soojungie,” comes tumbling out of Taemin’s mouth, before he bites his tongue so hard he tastes blood. “Sorry.”

Yena shakes her head quickly, reassuring him, “It’s okay, I’m not that crazy. I just talked about my ex, too.”

Taemin can barely feel his hand anymore. If he knew he was hurting Taemin he’d let go, but Taemin knows he’s hurting Jonghyun just being next to him, he’s known from before he touched him, and he still hasn’t. He can’t get up and leave Jonghyun here. He can’t run away, not far enough. He’s been running for half his life and he always ends up back here.

“Was that when you went to the hot springs together?” Jonghyun asks Jongin. And when he shakes his head, “Taeminnie told me he couldn’t remember where you had been.”

“Kusatsu.”

“We went to Hakone,” Jonghyun says.

“I wanted to tell you, Jongin-ah.” Taemin’s voice isn’t his own, sharp, shaky, too loud. “I just didn’t know how, it happened so suddenly.”

“It’s been not happening for fifteen years.” Jonghyun won’t even look at him as he says it, eyes fixed on Jongin’s face. “You must have seen all the same things as me. Taeminnie in his yukata, Taeminnie naked in the bath. The one we went to was outside, so I got to see him in the sunlight. He was so beautiful. But when isn’t he? I always thought your heart must be made of stone to never flutter once, looking at him.”

Jongin flounders, this look on his face like all thirty-three years of Taemin’s life just fell on top of his head. “What?”

“I’m not made of stone,” Jonghyun tells him. “He’s turned me into mush.”

Split second of silence, Jongin’s wide eyes, and Taemin might be dying, but that’s his voice, gushing out like blood, “Hyung likes to say weird stuff, you know that,” _you know me better than I know myself, you know so many things without me telling you, how can you be so surprised._ Probably because Taemin has lied to him for as long as he’s known anything. He’s so fucking dumb, so useless, trying to peel Jonghyun’s fingers back with his other hand, struggling so hard they can all see, _Don’t tell him don’t do this to me don’t, not like this. Please don't._

“Hyung always means it,” Jonghyun says in this awful twisted up voice. “I know I told you before that it’s cute when you play dumb, Taeminnie, but let’s stop playing.”

He drags their joined hands onto the tabletop.

Yena’s eyes fly to Taemin’s face, while Jongin’s flit between them.

He gets as far as, “You and hyung,” before he falters. “You two are dating?”

The curl of Jonghyun’s mouth cuts Taemin in half. “Who are you asking?”

“You mean the answer would be different?”

“If you asked Taeminnie, you wouldn’t get one.” Taemin’s struggling again to free himself, tugging, twisting, too weak for Jonghyun to even notice, and somehow his grip hurts less than his warmth, the same hand that’s held him together all these years ripping him apart. “I get that it’s weird, and the timing is bad, but all the same, is it really so surprising? Think back to all his boyfriends, now look at me. I’m his exact type.”

“I’m sorry, Jongin-ah,” Taemin is saying. Babbling. “I shouldn’t have brought him.”

“You should have told him we’re sleeping together,” Jonghyun says over him, before he smiles that awful smile again. “Not that we sleep much. Taeminnie needs it as much as he needs me, but you know I can’t say no to him. I’m not like you, I never learned how.”

“Sorry, I didn’t know it would end up like this. Sorry, Jonginnie, really. Please don’t be mad.”

“Why would he be?” Jonghyun says mercilessly.

Taemin yanks against Jonghyun’s hold.

“I’m sorry.”

“What for? We haven’t done anything wrong.”

Taemin doesn’t know he’s stood up until his chair crashes to the floor. The last thing he knows is the waitress’s shocked face, tray slamming onto the table as it slips from her nerveless fingers, one of the crabs skittering off it, and then somehow he’s halfway down the stairs, and when he takes his next breath he’s in the open air, so cold it hurts. Everything does. There’s no one around, too cold for the valets to hang around outside, too late for people to walk anywhere, too early for the parties to start, nowhere left for him to go. Deep black sky, snow crunching underfoot, neon lights blurred with tears, Jonghyun’s hand on his arm, wrenching him back around to face him. And then Taemin is back to yanking at his hold, harder when Jonghyun’s fingertips bite into his flesh, harder when Jonghyun tells him, “You have no right to be mad at me, Taeminnie.”

Taemin pushes him away instead. Hits him. His hands are curled into fists somehow, somehow he’s hitting him, raining blows on his chest and shoulders, weak and useless, but he barely catches up to his own body when Jonghyun’s fingers close around his wrists instead, ripping, “You said you’d always be here. You said I’d always have you,” out of him. “How is this being here, how is this always?”

Jonghyun’s face twists.

“Who’s been playing with who? He asked me for help setting you up with another man,” he says, breathing hard. “This whole time you’ve been with me, have you been weighing your options?”

“He asked and I said no, hyung.”

“Like you ever say no to him.”

“I fucking said it again tonight!”

Jonghyun’s eyes flare and for one moment it’s like he’s too angry to even form words. “Was it so hard to say you already had me?”

“It wasn’t a big thing, he asked and I said no,” Taemin says, voice rising and rising and rising, up into the black night, “and you have no fucking right either, we’re not fucking dating.”

“Right, we’re just fucking,” Jonghyun snarls. At his own words something in his face breaks, but he already broke Taemin, his heart, his body, his whole life. “Go fuck him too. You already broke your rules to fuck me, you don’t even have to wait for it to feel like a date. You can book the fucking hotel room before you see him.”

“Fucking _let go of me.”_

“You said you thought of me sometimes. Think of me when you’re with him. Unless you were lying?”

“You think I could lie about that?” _Do you know how hard that was for me to tell you, how much of myself I gave you? Give it back._ In a burst of desperation, Taemin jerks free of Jonghyun’s grip, sending Jonghyun stumbling back, feet slipping on the icy sidewalk. He did it to get away, but before Taemin can even think his hands are reaching for him, to steady him, pull him in, just one touch to make sure he’s okay. Jonghyun takes another step back from him. Taemin is on his own. “You think I don’t think of you?”

Jonghyun smiles that terrible smile again, brighter and faker than the neon light bathing his face, but it corrodes as it forms, and his voice is so broken it barely sounds human. “Sex is the only time you ever do.”

Taemin’s whole body, his whole life, goes black. Nothing else changes. The world keeps turning. The snow keeps falling. Cars glide up the street. Jonghyun has stripped him naked and learned Taemin’s body better than Taemin himself, come inside him and turned everything within him white, and at the end of all that, he’s looking at him like he’s never looked at him before, and he still can’t see him.

_I love you, hyung. I’ve been in love with you for as long as you’ve known me._

“I’m not the one who was going to marry Bora-ssi.”

“Because of you!” Jonghyun yells, so loud it feels like the sky is crashing down, no air left in Taemin’s lungs. Jonghyun can still breathe somehow, deep, shuddering, sobbing breaths, like a knife between Taemin’s ribs, caressing Taemin’s face as he takes that single step closer again, then another, eyes burning black, holding Taemin’s. “From our first date, to our first night together, to our breakup, the only thought in my head was you. I could say that about so many women. What about you, how many men is sometimes?”

Before Taemin can even try and lie, Jonghyun leans in to fit their mouths together roughly. At the first touch of his lips the truth is there, rising up inside Taemin, pain like he’s never felt in every little part of him, and even as he pushes Jonghyun away it bursts out of him: “All of them.”

Those words reach Jonghyun. Taemin watches them hit his face. And then somehow Jonghyun’s mouth curls and he says, “So far.”

Taemin’s tears are finally falling. Shit. He brushes them away and there are more, blinding him, choking him. “You can say that to me?”

“Give me a reason not to.”

 _I love you, hyung._ That’s all Taemin has to say. That’s it. Those words were buried so deep inside him, but ever since their first night together, from the moment he first pressed his lips to Jonghyun’s to the kiss he just broke, Jonghyun has dragged them closer and closer to the light. He’s said them a million times before in a million different ways, how can it be this hard to say them now, the way he’s always meant them? _I love you._

Jonghyun smiles bitterly into his silence, this expression that shatters Taemin and leaves him in a thousand tiny pieces, all sharp enough to kill.

“Even now, you can’t.”

_What about you, do you love me? If you do you would have just said that, you wouldn’t be saying these things to me now. You’re the one who’s good with words, why am I the one who has to use them?_

“I gave you so many why we shouldn’t have started, why we’d end up here.” His own voice sounds like nothing he’s ever heard. “Do you think I said all that to protect myself?”

Jonghyun’s eyes flash and he opens his mouth furiously to reply, but somehow that’s the thing that does him in, face crumpling as he gets out, “If it was to protect me, all it did was hurt me.” He’s crying. Taemin made him cry. “That’s all you ever do.”

There’s snow in his hair and his breath is hanging in the air like smoke and he’s crying, tears streaming down his face, and all Taemin can think is that they’ll freeze out here. That and, “Hyung.”

When Taemin reaches for him blindly, Jonghyun knocks his hand away, knocks a sob out of him. He can’t cry right now, he has no fucking right, not when he did that to Jonghyun’s face, but somehow watching Jonghyun scrub his tears away makes his own fall faster.

“We both knew what we were getting into. It’s been fifteen years, Taemin-ah. Isn’t it time you realized this isn’t going to go away?” Jonghyun smiles again, small, painful, as real as it is broken. If it hurts Taemin to see it, how much must it have hurt Jonghyun to give it to him? It _hurts._ “Whatever ‘this’ is. Don’t worry, I know it’s not love. Not like that.”

“I love you.”

Three little words, but Taemin didn’t keep them inside him so long only for them to come out like this, crooked and broken and wrong.

Jonghyun throws them away without looking once. “Not like I love you.”

He turns away. Taemin’s heart lurches, black with fear, ground opening up at his feet, but all it takes is three steps and he has Jonghyun in his arms, warm and solid and there, even as he struggles to free himself. Taemin buries his face in the back of his shirt, locking his fingers together, holding on for dear life.

“I love you, I said,” he sobs. “I love you.”

“I know, Taeminnie,” Jonghyun bursts out, this inhuman voice that has Taemin squeezing his eyes shut tighter, hiding from him even as he hangs onto him with all he has. “That’s what hurts the most.”

“Where are you going?”

“To hell.”

Jonghyun breaks his hold like nothing. Taemin is nothing. He doesn’t care. Before Jonghyun can take another step he grabs his wrist, clumsy with fear. “Your car, hyung. Hyung.”

Jonghyun twists in his grip, so gentle even as pries Taemin’s fingers loose. Taemin grabs him again, both hands this time, _please don’t go, hyung, I’m sorry, I love you, PLEASE._

“Don’t hold onto me, Taeminnie, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I want you to. Put me through everything I put you through.”

Instead of words Jonghyun makes this awful wounded sound, before he yanks free. Next thing Taemin knows he hits the pavement, knee cracking, ice burning into his palms, this feeling ripping his body apart, tears dropping onto the cement. By the time he can look up again it’s them blinding him and not the pain, but when he scrubs them away there are more, and Jonghyun is gone.

_Hyung._

“Taemin-ah?”

Jongin.

By the time the valet brings Jongin’s car, Taemin is all out of tears, and he’s left with this feeling like his heart has been carved out of his chest. It’s easier to hide from Jongin’s looks in the backseat, and neither of them make him talk. He should be apologizing, explaining, apologizing again, but all he has in him is to stay here in the corner of their eyes and ruin their night a little more. Jongin kisses Yena good night and drops her off at her place, then takes Taemin home with him. He would rather die than go home to the things Jonghyun left behind and his cold empty bed, so he follows him up dumbly. There’s no one around this late, not in the parking garage or the elevator or the hallway Jongin shares with his neighbor, but it’s bad enough that Jongin is here.

Being alone is so much worse. Taemin avoids his own eyes in the bathroom mirror, ignores the bruises blooming on his arms and wrists and knee, but it’s so hard to keep his own hands gentle as he scrubs the day away, so hard not to imagine Jonghyun’s instead, big and warm and holding him together. Jonghyun is probably freezing by now if he hasn’t gone back for his car. He always told Taemin he liked the cold, but half the time that was only to get Taemin to take his jacket from him. _Why did you ever like me, hyung?_ He doesn’t know he has tears left until they fall, but the water washes them away, and the sound of the shower swallows his sobs, until finally, maybe, he’s wrung out.

_Go home, hyung. Sleep. If I can after everything I’ve done to you, you have to, too._

Instead of making up the couch, Jongin lets Taemin share his bed. The first time they slept together they were trainees and it was past 2 a.m. in the practice room. Jongin was scared out of his mind, right up until Taemin told him about the ghost he’d seen in there, and Jongin laughed at him so hard he forgot his fear. There were a lot of times in between too, hotels on trips when they made booking mistakes, times they got drunk and went home together, the nights Jongin stayed over at Shinee’s dorm and chose squashing Taemin over stealing Jonghyun’s bed, in case he came home in the end. That was only a single. This one is so huge Kwonho and Moongyu could fit too. Taemin has miles and miles of mattress at his back when Jongin snuggles closer, but Taemin lies still instead of rolling away, letting Jongin read his face. He’s already seen everything.

Finally Jongin says, “So Jonghyunnie hyung.”

“Mm.”

“How long?”

He’s spent all these years not saying anything, but this is Jongin, and somehow it comes out as easily as ever. “Since before I met you.”

“I’ve never seen you cry that hard before.” Jongin reaches over to rub at Taemin’s eyes, smiling faintly. “Your whole face turned red. It’s still blotchy.”

“You’re not mad at me for not telling?”

Jongin’s expression doesn’t change. “I am.”

Jongin has never wanted to hear sorry from him, so Taemin is always stuck finding other ways to say it. The only one he can think of right now is, “I’ll pay you back for dinner.”

He’s barely finished before Jongin is shaking his head at him, hair whispering against his pillow.

“Let’s just call it even. I never paid you back for the trip we didn’t take, you don’t have to pay for the dinner we didn’t eat.”

“Things would have been a lot easier if we’d just gone to Jejudo,” Taemin says.

“That wouldn’t have changed anything, Taemin-ah. You would have gone longer without doing anything about it, is all,” Jongin replies evenly. “That sounds harder to me.”

This is hard enough as it is. Even breathing is taking so much out of him.

“I fucked things up, Jongin-ah.”

Jongin’s expression doesn’t change, but he reaches for Taemin again, this time to pet his hair. He’s half a year younger than Taemin and Taemin could have made him call him hyung instead of being friends, but then maybe he would be all alone right now. Taemin lets him do it.

Lets Jongin say, “He made it sound like it’s just sex.”

He didn’t even hear what Jonghyun said outside the restaurant. Just the barest thought of it and Taemin is swallowing everything back again. His voice is going to come out weird no matter what he says, and somehow lying again would break his heart more than anything else tonight.

“It isn’t. Not to me,” Taemin gets out. “He said it’s not to him, either.”

Jongin’s hand pauses mid-stroke. “You don’t believe him?”

“He doesn’t believe me.” One more second of eye contact and Taemin can’t take it anymore. Jongin’s fingers trail across his forehead as he rolls onto his back, but the ceiling stares right back, hard and unforgiving. “There are different kinds of love, Jongin-ah. For me, hyung was always a man. For him…”

“You were a baby,” Jongin supplies, way too easily. “You even seem that way to me sometimes.”

Taemin used to hate that so much, which is probably why it’s taken Jongin this long to say it. Everyone around him has always been way too nice to Taemin for his own good. Maybe if Jonghyun hadn’t spoiled him like this, if he’d said no to him just once, Taemin would have learned to think of his feelings before his own. Maybe he wouldn’t have been so scared to look deeper into Jonghyun’s heart.

“When the way he looked at me changed, I didn’t know if his feelings had too,” is the simplest way of explaining any of that. When he sneaks a glance at Jongin, though, Jongin is giving him this look like he’s too dumb to breathe. Maybe that’s it, maybe that really is why he can’t. “What?”

“How can you know him so well and not know him at all? It’s Jonghyun hyung. He wouldn’t have touched you if he didn’t want more than sex.”

“I wouldn’t have, either,” shoots out of Taemin’s mouth, and then, “He acted like I’d just fuck anyone.”

Taemin wrenches himself back around, back to the fucking ceiling, blinking fast. Jongin’s sigh hits him like a slap, and if he’s raising himself up on his elbow just to give Taemin that look again, there’s no point. Taemin already knows he’s stupid. That’s pretty much the only thing he knows anymore. 

“You humiliated him, Taemin-ah. He didn’t know if it was a date or not, and then it turned out like that.” Jongin stares down at Taemin, stares and stares, watching to see where those words go in, waiting until finally Taemin meets his eyes again. “He must have said a lot of things he didn’t mean.”

He should have meant them all. Taemin would have deserved it. He deserves worse.

“It probably hurt him more than me to say them. If he’s not still mad he must be really hurting right now.” Taemin’s insides twist up so tight it takes everything he has just to lay still in this soft bed, this quiet room, and let himself say something other than _I hurt him, I did that to him. It was me. I fucking hate myself. He should hate me too._ “I should have just told you before. From the start.”

 _I should never have even looked at him, if I was going to do this._ But that’s impossible. Where else would Taemin’s eyes go?

Jongin says, “Why didn’t you?”

Tell.

Taemin had so many reasons. He spent so long not knowing his own feelings. Jonghyun could never return them. They could never be together. There was always someone else. Their parents. The others. Shinee. This world.

“You would have told me to move on,” he says.

Jongin shakes his head. Wrong again. “I would have told you to confess.”

Yeah, Taemin is stupid. So stupid. But that’s why Jongin is here. Taemin rolls back onto his side, facing him again.

“And now?” he asks painfully.

Two little words, and he barely has to live with them before Jongin is telling him, “Same thing.” Jongin smooths his thumb over the crease between Taemin’s eyebrows, the same way Taemin has done to Jonghyun a million times over the years. “Jonghyunnie hyung will take you back. It’s like he said, he can’t say no. I just hope he doesn’t get weird about me like all your other boyfriends.”

_I just hope he still wants me._

Jonghyun wouldn’t have said those things if he didn’t. Taemin’s insides are still squeezed so tight there’s no room for his stomach to flip over as he lets Jongin’s words sink in, _hyung_ and _boyfriend_ and _mine,_ but this thing is forcing its way onto Taemin’s face that almost feels like a smile.

“He likes you.”

“I like him too,” Jongin replies simply. “That’s why.”

And that’s enough about Taemin. He’s not the only one who had a bad night, and it’s his fault Jongin did. It’s too late to make it right, and maybe there’s no way for him to apologize that Jongin will want to hear. If he doesn’t find one now, though, he might have to wait forever for another night like this to come.

He already knows he got it wrong before he even says it: “I thought Yena-ssi hated me before, but there’s no way she doesn’t now.”

Jongin’s brow wrinkles. “That’s what you thought?”

“I’d only met her once and you introduced her to your parents, Jongin-ah. What was I supposed to think?”

“She didn’t want to make a big fuss about being a fan, she thought that would make things weird for you. Or that having her around would make you uncomfortable?” Jongin hesitates. “She kept telling me to spend more time with you, but it felt like a test.”

“She doesn’t seem like that kind of person.”

“She’s not, she’s different. You don’t know many girls have dumped me and told me to just date you instead.” Jongin's smile fades almost as it forms. “I’m not good at being a good boyfriend and a good friend at the same time.”

If he’d said that just one month ago, how would Taemin have replied? With another lie, probably. _I’m fine. I’m not lonely without you. My life isn’t falling apart. Even if it is, I’m happy that you’re happier than me._ He’d barely have to think to come up with a million more, but even before he saw Taemin cry all the tears in his body, Jongin had to have known Taemin’s real feelings. That Taemin was so lonely he could die.

“Make sure it works out with Yena-ssi,” Taemin says instead of any of that. He barely has to force a smile. “You can’t have me, I’m Jonghyunnie hyung’s.”

Jongin doesn’t smile back. “You always ignore the part that’s the hardest to say. Sorry I’ve been a bad friend."

There’s that word. Finally one of them said it.

Not sure what else to do, how to get that look off Jongin’s face, get this feeling inside himself out, Taemin slides his fingers across the mattress until they meet Jongin’s. Jongin starts at his touch, then relaxes as Taemin squeezes his hand.

“I’m sorry too. I’ve been way worse than you.” For one long moment that’s all Taemin can get out, but they keep breathing, and Jongin squeezes back, and just like that, it’s okay again. “I should have tried harder to understand you, and then I got so wrapped up in hyung that I ended up ignoring you, too. It must have been the same with Yena-ssi.”

Jongin is making this weird face, almost like he’s about to cry or laugh, and now he shakes his head. “It wasn’t like that.”

Taemin’s heart constricts.

“Then what is it?”

“The same things you’ve been going through, just not that,” Jongin says in an even weirder voice. “My career feels like it’s over.”

He said he was happy. That it wasn’t like that for him. Were those all lies, too? Taemin really thought he could tell with him.

“Jongin-ah…”

“I have so much money I don’t need to make any more, and the company doesn’t even need EXO for that anymore either, and my solo…you know all about that.” Jongin searches Taemin’s face, almost like he’ll find everything he needs to say already there. “Staring into nothing scared the shit out of me. It made me feel like I was nothing. No one. Yena saved me.”

The last time he went into talks with Creative and they shut them down, all Jongin told Taemin was, _Creative dumped me again~,_ and the afternoon last year he waited for Taemin at that coffee shop and walked back to SM with Yena instead, Taemin spent locked in meetings that would end up going nowhere. He just didn’t know it yet. When he got out it was after dark and Jongin was still there, and they went and had dinner instead, and in between listening to Taemin talk about the album he thought he would record, maybe Jongin said something like, _I met a girl who works at the company today._

“She gave you something to live for?”

“I know that’s a lot to put on one person,” Jongin says. “I’m trying to be better.”

“You didn’t feel like you could talk to me, after everything?”

Taemin says it before he can stop himself, and then he has to lie here and live with not taking it back. Jongin just shakes his head again.

“I didn’t want you to see me like that.”

“I would’ve understood, Jongin-ah,” Taemin says painfully.

Would he have? Taemin went solo when he was only twenty-two. Jongin had to wait until he was almost thirty. For every year of Taemin’s career SM has wasted, there are ten of Jongin’s. Even now…it took him three tries and Jonghyun’s help to get past Creative, but his album is almost finished.

“Part of me still hopes you never do, and part of me wanted to bring you with me,” Jongin says. He smiles suddenly. Stupidly. “I’m getting old and you’re not.”

Taemin presses his finger into the corner of Jongin’s eye as it crinkles up. “What are you talking about, you’re the one who hasn’t aged.”

“I mean we’re on different parts of our lives.” Jongin clears his throat. “I want to marry Yena.”

“Manager hyung figured,” is all Taemin knows to say.

Probably because he sucks, but it’s not like he can congratulate Jongin for something that hasn’t happened yet, anyway. By the time it does, he should be able to.

“I wanted to slow you down, too. It’s awkward for both you and Yena when it’s the three of us, I wanted to make it four so badly,” Jongin confesses, before his mouth crooks. “I owe Jonghyunnie hyung.”

“I miss it being just the two of us.”

Those words have been eating at him all year. Who knew they’d be so easy to say?

Taemin should have. It’s Jongin. His smile broadens, and he says, “I do too.”

“It doesn’t have to be all the time. I can share you if you can share me,” Taemin says in a rush, so far ahead of himself.

Jongin laughs, almost too loud in the dark. “Yena doesn’t get jealous.”

“Hyung does.”

So, so far ahead, but Jongin’s only reply is, “I know. The more I look back, the more obvious it is.”

“Uh huh, we’re so obvious you went fifteen years without noticing.” Jongin makes this face at him, so dumb-looking that somehow he gets Taemin to smile. It barely hurts. “Jongin-ah.”

“Mm,” Jongin grunts.

“Back when I debuted first, did you really think I would stop being friends with you?” Taemin says. “That my head would get that big.”

“That you would forget to look back and leave me behind,” Jongin corrects him gently. “You were so busy all the time.”

“But it’s been seventeen years, and we’re still talking.” There’s nothing Taemin can do as his smile fades and that weird light inside him starts to die, but before the rest of the night rolls back in, he has to put this one last part of himself out there. “Go ahead and get married. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up following~”

And just like that, Taemin’s smile is on Jongin’s face instead, shy and painful, almost like he’s scared to let it take over.

“Make up with hyung first,” he tells Taemin. “And put out your album.”

“You, too,” Taemin says in return, but maybe even that was too much, because Jongin’s smile falters. “I only do 30 for EXO, but when your next solo comes out, I’ll buy 50 copies.”

For one long moment, Jongin just looks at him with this expression on his face that could break either way. Then, finally, “You know how many fans I lost just from dating? 100.”

“I hope Manager hyung knows that many people.”

This time when Taemin rolls over onto his other side, Jongin leaves him be. Taemin curls in on himself and closes his eyes. The darkness behind his eyelids is so much scarier than that of Jongin’s room. If he stays just like this long enough he’ll fall asleep, but if Jonghyun even goes to bed he’ll just lie awake, and when Taemin sees him tomorrow the shadows under his eyes will be scarier still. And he’ll be PD-nim. Taemin has to hang on all through their meeting with Creative, then recording, then mixing, until Manager hyung falls asleep outside and the last engineer leaves, and finally Jonghyunnie hyung will be there again, and he won’t be alone anymore.

He’s not alone right now. Jongin pushes his toes against Taemin’s calf, mumbling into his pillow, “The next time I text you, text me back. Promise.”

Taemin got his first phone when SM shipped Shinee off to debut in Japan. He’s had fifteen years to get better at them. Thirty to get better at talking.

No more excuses.

“Promise,” Taemin says, and squeezes his eyes shut tighter.

When he wakes up he doesn’t know how he ever slept. Jongin feeds him breakfast at the place down the street and lets Taemin pay, and then he drives him over to SM. His food tastes like nothing, but that’s better than tasting like tears, and the snow from last night hasn’t turned to slush, washed with pink as the same sun rising on Taemin rises on Jonghyun. Wherever he is. From the minute his eyes opened, the only thing in Taemin’s head was Jonghyun, and as they get closer, he takes over the rest of Taemin’s body too, stealing the air from his lungs, sending his face hot and cold, squeezing his heart so tight he’s scared it’ll burst all over Jonghyun the minute he gets to see him. If he gets to. Just that one thought has everything inside him twisting up so tight he doesn’t take his next breath until he pushes the door to the meeting room open and his eyes land on Jonghyun’s back.

Jonghyun doesn’t look up, even when Taemin drops into the seat next to him, the last empty one. Director-nim greets Taemin with a smile and goes straight to business, leaving him so far behind. With every breath he takes of Jonghyun’s air, he falls further and further. Taemin has so many things he has to say, but none of them are about his album. _Have you slept? Have you eaten? You’re not in last night’s clothes, that means you went home, right? Tell me how badly I hurt you, let me see._

_Hyung._

Jonghyun has a lot of things to say, too. About his album and his album only. Just the sound of his voice sends cracks through the ice between them, but it’s so hard to listen to what he’s saying. So hard to care about other things before he knows Jonghyun is okay. Taemin needs to try harder, fight with all his strength for their submissions, to keep recording for as long as he can before they block him from the studio for another two years, but it’s a struggle to even try at all. When Creative glosses over each song in a sentence or two, Taemin can’t think of a word more to say, but Jonghyun uses theirs against them, picking them apart and turning one sentence into ten or twenty, points, counterpoints, explanations, arguments, around and around and around until Taemin can barely think straight, and the only thing he’s sure Creative is sure of is the number.

Seven songs.

“So you decided. It’s a mini album.”

Jonghyun glances up at the sound of his voice, which is how Taemin realizes it’s the first thing he’s said in ten minutes. He looks away in the next second, but Taemin still hasn’t when the assistant director replies and reminds him other people exist.

“A long one. It seems like kind of an arbitrary distinction when the difference is only two or three songs, doesn’t it?”

“If it seems arbitrary to you, why not give us those two to three songs, why cut us off?” Jonghyun says. “It’s not a semantic difference. It’s a material one.”

“Now you’re playing with semantics, Jonghyun-ssi,” Director-nim says, before Jonghyun corrects her with an ironic curl of his mouth:

“Kim PD.”

“The next time we have bad news for you we’ll remember not to put it in the best light possible, PD-nim,” she says evenly, holding Jonghyun’s eyes. “The material difference between a mini and a full length for you and Taemin-ssi is a few songs. For the company it’s money we need to spend elsewhere.”

“I can split my songwriting royalties with you, if that helps.”

Jonghyun is deadly serious, but Director-nim just laughs, and the rest of the staff follows suit. Jonghyun should know better than anyone that’s the least of their problems – he can only make a lot on artists who get airplay, and Taemin is far past that. The real issue is staff and studio time. For his album to sell enough to pay for recording, they’d have to spend more on promoting him, and that’d mean putting more people on his comeback than they think he’s worth. Taemin should have learned to do more things himself, but if he starts now, by the time he’s doing everything, there’ll be nothing left for him here. Maybe not in the industry, either.

Expression unchanging, Jonghyun says, “I can foot the bill for recording from now on, too.”

That’s over 500000 won an hour, last time Taemin checked. Director-nim barely reacts, but the slightest rise of her eyebrows has Taemin saying, “Hyung likes to joke about stuff like that. If anyone, it should be me paying. Anyone else could have recorded twice as many songs in the time we had.”

_You can’t buy me my album like you buy me everything else, hyung. Even if SM let you, I wouldn’t._

Jonghyun opens his mouth, but not before Director-nim smiles and goes along with it, saying, “You always like to go back in and edit, too. Perfectionists are expensive.” Then she turns back to Jonghyun. “There was a rumor in the A&R team that you were coming back yourself, since so many of the submissions were your compositions. We were under the impression you’d stopped writing, since you’ve turned down all our other artists.”

What? Jonghyun said he’d had offers, never that it had been in-house. When Taemin’s eyes shoot up to his face, Jonghyun ignores him. “I had a backlog meant for Taemin-ssi. I have a hundred more demos in my phone, if you want to go through and find the one that changes your mind.”

“The ones you submitted were all good enough to go on the album, and I think you know that. Nominally, this meeting was to finalize the track list, but, really, the number is the only final thing. Pick which ones you want and use the rest for yourself, Jonghyun-ssi. Or sell them to us, we’ll find the right fit.”

“This meeting isn’t about me,” is all Jonghyun has to say to any of that. “And those songs are all about Taemin-ssi.”

Taemin’s heart hurts.

“What about splitting it into two parts?” Somehow he drags his eyes away from Jonghyun’s profile and turns to face Director-nim again. If this is a stupid idea, let her be the one to tell him. “Two minis. When I came out with _Never Gonna Dance Again,_ that’s what we ended up doing. That way you break even – it’s the same amount of music as a full length, but physical sales could double, maybe even more if you repackage it into a complete set later.”

It only takes her half a second to consider it.

“Physical album sales were up that year because of Covid, Taemin-ssi. That would also require two distinct concepts. What you have here currently is very…”

“Samey~?” Jonghyun supplies.

“Cohesive,” the assistant director counters. Semantics again.

“A lot of that comes down to the arrangement. The studio version could end up totally different from the demo,” Taemin argues pointlessly. “At worst, this could be the first half, and then we can start preparing for the second.”

Director-nim smiles thinly. “Meaning you’re really asking for another seven songs, not just two or three.”

“Half a year from now. Longer, counting all the meetings it would take,” Taemin retorts before he can stop himself. “Is that really so much to ask?”

He already knows the answer: yes and no. It means too much to him, but he means too little to the company. Maybe he should be grateful they even have these meetings to shut him up when they could not have them at all. He only said something to stop her from arguing with Jonghyun, stop Jonghyun from saying the things Taemin should, but somehow he’s ended up where he always does. Nowhere. Taemin makes himself keep his chin up, holding Director-nim’s eyes for as long as it takes for her to look away, not sure if he wants to lay his head down on the table and hide from whatever bullshit she says next, or if he’d be fine if he could just hold Jonghyun’s hand.

“One thing I’ve never understood about this company is that you set our expiration date yourselves.” Jonghyun. Taemin’s eyes follow the sound of his voice before he can even think, and just like that, Jonghyun is his whole world again. “You’ve never tested where our peak actually is, you just pull your investment at the first contract renewal. Back when I first debuted, people said that idols couldn’t sing. You trained us to prove them wrong. Why is it so hard to test the prejudice that idols can’t be artists?” Jonghyun’s voice isn’t shaking, but his hands are, clenched into fists on the table in front of him. All Taemin wants is to take them in his. “Taemin-ssi has done things that no other performer in this country can do. He’s worth your money. He’s worth more than that.”

_It’s okay, hyung. I’m okay._

Taemin has to find some way to tell him that. Jonghyun won’t look at him and Taemin is out of words he can say in front of Creative, and pushing his foot into Jonghyun’s under the table barely even makes him start, eyes boring into Director-nim.

“I shouldn’t need to tell you that SM isn’t the same company it was in 2005 – it’s moved on to other horizons,” she’s saying. “It stopped putting talent management first the second it started making real money. My job isn’t to change the formula, it’s to make sure it keeps working.”

“That’s all a lot of words to say you won’t promote an album you let us record,” Jonghyun says. “Seems like you’re wasting money, not saving it.”

The assistant director laughs, loud and fake, haha funny joke, Jonghyun-ssi, let’s move on, but Director-nim replies gamely, “You used a lot yourself if that’s all you’re worried about. Music shows aren’t about art, they’re about sales.”

“They’re about performance. Music is meant to be performed.”

“And the songs you’re fighting over are album tracks that might feature in the middle of a concert set, if that.”

“And? Better that than a demo in my phone or another file in your vaults.” Jonghyun smiles, bitter, ironic, like a knife in Taemin’s heart. “A song no one has heard isn’t music.”

If that’s what he thinks, Taemin is going to play through every single folder he has, whoever’s name is on it, starting with the one Jonghyun keeps for himself. In the meantime, he has to curl his fingers into fists to keep them in his lap while she smiles back. It doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Your boss is still your boss, whether you want to listen to them or not,” she says.

Jonghyun sits back in his chair, so deliberately careless he has every muscle in Taemin’s body tensing up. “Until our contracts run out.”

“Getting you to re-sign is not my prerogative.” She leans back too, folding her arms over her chest, eyes traveling between the two of them before settling on Taemin finally. “The reality is you both need the company more than the company needs you.”

That’s not true, not both of them. SM has let Jonghyun produce for artists outside of the company just to keep him here, even if half of them have tried to poach him, and if he were having this argument about a better investment than Taemin, even legacy acts like Baekhyun or Taeyeon, he might be winning. Music critics treat Jonghyun’s name with more reverence than the company’s and they’ve been looking for another voice like his for years and never found one. And if Jonghyun leaves here on bad terms, even if no other company makes a place for him, he’ll carve out his own. Taemin knows he will.

As for Taemin himself…this company is all he’s ever known. He’s never thought about after, when just the thought that after existed paralyzed him. He’ll have to start thinking. For now, he clears his throat and sits up as straight as he can.

“Hyung doesn’t. I do.” Jonghyun’s eyes fly to his face. It seems like the only way to get him to forget himself and look at him is to say stupid things. “I’m fine with a mini as long as you leave us to choose the title track.”

“Taeminnie—”

Another mistake, one that makes Taemin so weak he can barely go on, but he has to.

“I’m also sitting in on all the meetings about the MV, from the beginning. You don’t need to worry about finding a choreographer, I’ll figure out the best fit.”

_I’ll figure it out, hyung. Let me._

Taemin has to get through the whole rest of the day after that, and once they’re back to the studio, Jonghyun doesn’t make the mistake of calling him Taeminnie again. Taemin-ssi this, Taemin-ssi that, except each this and that should be life or death. He’s down to so few songs left, which means he has to pour every last thing he has into them. And isn’t that better than trying to live with himself? Every part he gives away is another part he doesn’t have to look at anymore.

That’s melodramatic. Stupid. Childish. His music is him. He’s not giving anything away. The things he records today will stay with him forever. If he stops fucking up, that is. If Jonghyun’s face in the window would stop making him forget everything else, trying to read it.

_Do you hate me, hyung? You don’t. You couldn’t. Right?_

_I love you._

Focus.

Take it from the top, Taemin-ssi. Let’s try that line again. Try a different inflection, just slightly. Too much tension. Taemin-ssi, what emotion are you conveying? Try feeling it, just a little. Use a memory. Vocal effects work for that too. Distortion, maybe? We can play with it later, but start thinking of how you want it to sound. Taemin-ssi. Taemin-ssi. Taemin-ssi.

_Focus, Taemin-ah._

Somehow he does.

When he finally makes it around to the other side of the glass, his heart is hammering in his chest and he’s back to shaking. He could stay in the corner of the room and survive off staring into Jonghyun’s profile and listening to his PD-nim voice, crisp and low, but the one of the engineers gives him his seat next to Jonghyun. As he takes it, Jonghyun glances up at him with eyes that see right through him, then turns back towards the monitor and doesn’t look at him again. If Taemin had any ideas about the mix, he’d listen to him same as the others, but it takes all his concentration to keep breathing, look at whoever is talking even when it’s not Jonghyun, not twist his hands in his lap or blink too fast or show any of his tells. One by one, the engineers filter out, until at last it’s just the two of them.

It’s okay if Jonghyun doesn’t want to look at him. It’s okay if the only thing keeping him here is work. Anything is, as long as Jonghyun stays long enough to hear this.

He means to say sorry right up until, “Thank you,” comes out instead. “For earlier.”

He means that, too, so much it hurts.

“What for?”

_For everything. I had nothing when I asked you to produce my album, and now I have seven songs. A mini isn’t the end of the world, hyung. Or my career. It’s a start._

“They’d already decided to cut us off before they set the meeting, they weren’t going to listen no matter what,” Taemin says. “Thank you for saying it all anyway.”

Jonghyun sighs, scrubbing his hand over his face, saying flatly, “If none of your producers ever stood up for you before, they weren’t doing their job,” turning dark eyes on Taemin. The shadows under them look even worse from this close up. Taemin just barely stops himself from reaching up to rub his finger over them.

“I was scared you wouldn’t come in to work,” Taemin confesses.

For one long moment Jonghyun just looks at him.

“I always do,” he says. “You know how many nights like that I’ve had over the last twenty years?”

Taemin’s heart squeezes in on itself, but he keeps breathing, which means he can keep talking.

“I should, but I don’t.” He swallows hard. “Did you sleep?”

Jonghyun’s expression flickers, and for one second Taemin is so sure he’s going to tell him what he already knows: _I never do._ Instead he reaches up with one hand to pet Taemin’s head clumsily, hand so big and warm and _there._ Taemin’s eyes almost slide shut at his touch, but somehow he’s already taking it away, fingers trailing over Taemin’s shoulder and falling back onto the control panel.

“I’ll have time to catch up soon. Two songs won’t take long.”

“I’m keeping all the other ones you gave me. Don’t steal them like ‘Cocktail,’ or I’ll do way worse than sleep in your bed.”

Taemin doesn’t say it without thinking. He knows better. How could he not, after everything? But Jonghyun doesn’t even flinch. “There’s nothing you could do that could surprise me anymore.”

Taemin lives and dies in one moment, and in the next he’s taken Jonghyun’s hand. Jonghyun’s eyes shoot up to his face, the liar. Before he can pull away, say any of the things cutting off Taemin’s air, _what are you doing, don’t touch me, it’s over, Taeminnie, you should know better than anyone what endings look like,_ Taemin laces their fingers together, pulling it into his lap, cradling it in both of his.

Jonghyun lets him do it, lets him sit there with his heart beating so hard his ribs will break, and says to him, “You don’t need to be here for this, Taemin-ah.”

_I need you._

Taemin tries smiling at him. It’s so much easier than he’d thought. “It was beginning to feel like you’d never call me that again.”

Jonghyun looks like he wants to look away so badly. Taemin would rather die than let him, it’s bad enough listening to him go on, “We already talked it out and made all the decisions we need to make. We can decide on the remaining songs tomorrow.”

“I thought you would tell me I look like shit again.”

“That too.”

“That’s what you say every night.” Taemin squeezes his hand, gathering his courage. “How did you ever fall for me?”

Jonghyun’s expression goes strange, on the edge of yelling or laughing or telling Taemin exactly how crazy he’s being, saying shitty things just to hurt him, but that’d mean hurting himself.

Finally he says in a voice so close to normal, “If I knew I would have dug myself out a long time ago.”

“How long is long?”

Taemin has to force those words out of his chest, but all he gets back is, “Long.”

“It’s been twenty years for me. Since I was thirteen.” Jonghyun is going to know he’s shaking, Taemin’s hands will tell him everything. At least the things that don’t need words. So many times over the past month, Taemin was scared Jonghyun would figure him out from the way he touched him, but this whole time, he was waiting for Taemin to say this. “It took me a while to realize, but all that time still counts. I never looked at anyone else.”

There. Everything. Taemin’s whole heart.

“Did you close your eyes when you were with all your boyfriends?”

Who is Jonghyun to ask, what about him and all his girlfriends?

“I thought you were never going to like me back,” Taemin says, fighting to keep smiling. It’s either that or fighting not to cry. “You saw me as a child, and you’d never see me as a man. I wish I’d known about Jinwoo earlier, I wish you’d told me.”

“You knew how I looked at you. I know you knew, Taemin-ah.”

“It was too late by then.” It’s too late now. “If I tell you I love you, you won’t believe me. You don’t know how crazy that makes me after all this time. I loved you before I even knew what that word meant.”

When Jonghyun starts to take his hand away, Taemin holds onto it with both of his, as tight as he can. It would take so little of Jonghyun’s strength to break free for good, but instead his features give, just a little, and he says, “You still don’t,” in last night's voice. If it was breaking then, now it’s broken, raw and brittle and sharp-edged, a thousand tiny cracks Taemin could shatter again with one breath.

“I do,” Taemin gets out, and then the rest is right there, and it’s too much to keep it back, “I love you, hyung, I’m in love with you, I’ve been in love with you for as long as I’ve known you,” until he runs out of breath before he runs out of words. “It’s relationships I never figured out. Maybe I should have tried as hard with other people as you did, then I would have hurt you less in the end.”

And then he’s back to smiling again. Every time it gets easier when it should get harder, even with his skin on fire and his throat closing in on him and his palms pricking with sweat. Jonghyun hates that. This time when he slips his hand out of Taemin’s grip, Taemin lets him go, but before the emptiness Jonghyun’s touch filled can open up inside him again, Jonghyun reaches up to run one knuckle down Taemin’s nose.

“It would have hurt me more to watch you with them, then,” he says, so gently Taemin can barely take it. “I must have hurt you a lot, too.”

And just like that, Taemin’s voice abandons him. “Mm.”

“I was so dumb back then, I wasted so much time without knowing what I wanted. You should have waited for me."

“I thought I was doing fine on my own. I thought I could handle it.” Taemin will have the rest of his life to hate himself if he doesn’t say this. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but all those things I told you before are true, hyung. There are so many things you want that I can’t give you. You deserve a full life.”

But as soon as it’s out of his mouth he hates himself anyway, and all he has to do is blink and he’s staring into the look he put on Jonghyun’s face. _If it was to protect me, all it did was hurt me._

“Then why did you kiss me that night?” Jonghyun says now.

If Taemin knew…he would have done it anyway. No, he would have done it long ago, even if all it meant was that last night would have come years earlier. And today.

Taemin takes a deep breath, meeting Jonghyun’s eyes. “Why did you ask me to go with you?”

Jonghyun doesn’t blink.

“What you’re talking about isn’t a full life, Taemin-ah, it’s no life at all.”

That’s the answer Taemin waited twenty years to hear? Twenty years of Jonghyun crying over breakups and writing songs about his wedding night, asking people if he seemed like the marrying kind and hoping with all his heart to hear yes. Twenty years of him being his mother’s son before anything else and trying to become the man his father never was. Even if Taemin is everything to him, how can all that become nothing?

“Hyung…”

Just then the door creaks open. Jonghyun’s eyes don’t leave Taemin’s face, but Taemin already knows it’s Manager hyung before he twists around, he’s already saying, “Go home, hyung. Jonghyunnie hyung will drive me.”

It’s only been a moment or two, but his heart is pounding out of his chest as he turns back to Jonghyun again. He’s never said no to Taemin, he said he’s never wanted to, but the first time is years and years past due.

“Night, hyung,” Jonghyun says. “Sorry we keep doing this to you.”

Manager hyung waves it off, gathering his things and saying good night back, same schedule tomorrow, what time do you want me to pick you up? Early?

 _I’ll walk,_ Taemin is dying to say, just this one last time. But that would only hurt him and Jonghyun both, so he tells another lie instead. “It depends on how far we get tonight, I’ll text you when I get out.”

The door clicks shut behind him and as suddenly as Manager hyung came, they’re alone again. Somehow the silence is different from before, deeper, heavier, even harder to break. Maybe that’s because eye contact after so long is chasing all Taemin’s words away, like sunlight and shadows. All he knows is that he could look at Jonghyun forever. Let him look back. See everything.

Suddenly, finally, Jonghyun says, “Do you remember the last time you got drunk and I took you home?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” At Jonghyun’s look, Taemin tries again. Gives him as much of an answer as he can. “I remember the next morning.”

And he thought back to it not too long ago, after all this had already started. The texts Jonghyun sent him and the note he left, which helped more than the hangover medicine and hangover soup.

“Driving you, piggybacking you up to your apartment, putting you to bed, that whole night, you only said one thing to me. Come back, hyung. Why won’t you come back? I never knew you were as big a fan of me as I was of you~.” Jonghyun leans back in his chair, propping his elbow up on the control panel, his head in his hand, tilting his head like changing his angle a little will help him see inside Taemin. Taemin resists the urge to copy him, stare straight into his face again. “Probably because you’re too scared to ask me sober.”

Taemin just told him he loved him, the hardest thing he’s ever said in his life, and now somehow they’re talking about this, and Jonghyun is asking him to say the second hardest thing, too.

“Because I thought I knew why, hyung. I didn’t want to push you after everything.”

As much as Jonghyun loves music, loves performing, over the years promoting started to break him down. When it was with Shinee, Taemin and the others could look after him, try and be there for him, but solo, he had no one. It was hard and nerve-wracking and lonely and the end of one day was only the beginning of another, a blur of emptiness. He never forgot and called Taemin at four a.m., he always went as long as he could before he let himself, and one time Taemin forgot himself and asked why. Instead of lying and saying _I forgot what time it is, I forgot how late it is for you,_ telling Taemin _just be happy you got to sleep at all,_ Jonghyun told him, _I just wanted to hear your voice._

Ever since then, Taemin started sleeping with his phone whenever Jonghyun had a comeback. He asked music show PD’s and staff and Manager hyung all a million times to take care of him, anyone who would listen, all while he was too scared to ask Jonghyun to take care of himself.

“Back then, I thought I had to do it no matter what. Without music, I was nothing, and if I’d run away I wouldn’t have been a man,” Jonghyun says slowly, almost like he’s feeling his way. “Enlistment felt like the end of everything. It terrifies me to shoot people in video games, you don’t know how scared I was to hold a real gun. But you know how it is. Time moves differently. Nothing happens for a reason there, it just happens. Life with no purpose. Just living.”

“That’s not how it was for me, for me it was like trying not to die.”

Jonghyun smiles faintly. “Were they mean to you?”

“They’re mean to everyone, that’s the whole point.” Taemin reaches up to smush Jonghyun’s cheek with his thumb. Letting his hand fall back into his lap instead of cupping Jonghyun’s face is the hardest thing. “What’s yours?”

“When I got out, I had this thought: why is it so hard to just live in this world? At least for me, it is. I moved on because I’d never figured out how to do anything else, but when I was working on my last album, it caught up with me.” Jonghyun pauses, almost like he’s waiting for it to catch up to Taemin too. At the touch of his hand, Taemin starts, but he lets Jonghyun curl his fingers around his, heart so full so suddenly. “I didn’t have to come back. I didn’t have to make new music. I didn’t have to reach 200 songs before I turn 40. Those were all things I put on myself, which meant they were all things I could let go.”

“I always thought it was promotions you hated,” Taemin says with difficulty. “You love music, hyung.”

Jonghyun smiles again, just barely. “It made me hate myself. You saw how many songs were in your folder. Do you know how many are in mine?”

Taemin should bite his tongue, listening to what Jonghyun is telling him, trying to understand, but his voice rushes out so far ahead of him, “I told you, you can have all those. And your fuckups aren’t like fuckups, you’re too hard on yourself.”

“That’s what I’m saying, Taemin-ah.” Jonghyun strokes his thumb over Taemin’s knuckles before threading their fingers together. When Taemin squeezes his hand, he squeezes back, holding Taemin’s eyes. “I love music, but it doesn’t love me back. And this life…there were so many times where I felt suffocated, but I never once stopped to breathe.”

Jonghyun is willing him to ask. That’s what his eyes, his face, his hand are all saying. _Ask, Taeminnie._ “Is that what being with me has felt like, breathing?”

Jonghyun’s smile widens, like sunburst through the clouds. “More like being drunk?”

“You hate drinking.”

“I love you.”

Jonghyun just barely says the words before Taemin is closing the distance between them. Kissing him. Jonghyun makes this tiny surprised noise, before he kisses him back, lips so soft pressed to Taemin’s, hand so big and warm, cupping his face as he draws back, leaning their foreheads together.

“I didn’t ask you to come with me to seduce you, and I didn’t fuck you to forget Bora-ssi. How could I, when I thought of you every time I was with her?” he tells Taemin, so breathless from just one kiss. “It was because I loved you and I wanted you. Why did you come with me?”

Taemin covers his hand on his face with his own, desperate to press in and fit their mouths together again when all Jonghyun needs from him right now is words.

“For the same reasons,” is as far as Taemin gets before he needs to breathe. Jonghyun waits for him, stroking his thumb over his cheek, staring into his eyes. “I loved, I love you and I want you.”

Instead of rewarding Taemin with another kiss, Jonghyun lifts away, slumping back in his chair. As his hand slips from Taemin’s face, Taemin draws it into his lap, just like his other one. If Jonghyun wants him to let go of either of them he’ll have to give him something else to hang onto.

“Sometimes I thought that.” Jonghyun hesitates, gaze wavering, lip caught between his teeth, before he confesses in an awful rush, “And sometimes I thought that you couldn’t bear losing him, so you threw yourself away on me.”

What? Who? What? Taemin needs another moment staring into Jonghyun’s face before it clunks into place. “You mean Jonginnie?”

_Is it Jonginnie again? Jonginnie’s girlfriend. It’s the things you don’t say as much as the things you do._

_Normal things have always been weird for you two._

_You think that’s like asking him to break up with her, in other words. It’s not, Taeminnie. At least it shouldn’t be._

_I always thought your heart must be made of stone to never flutter once, looking at him. You know I can’t say no to him. I’m not like you, I never learned how._

_You sure you’re not jealous? I would be. I get that way all the time._

“You love him, too,” Jonghyun says now. “More than anyone.”

“Not more than you, and not like that. Not as a man. How could you even think that?”

Jonghyun narrows his eyes at him. “You let me.”

“I’m not the only one who spent fifteen years not saying anything,” Taemin reproaches him. “If I hadn’t kissed you that night, you would have just gone to sleep.”

“What about you?” Jonghyun retorts, like Taemin isn’t watching as the corners of his mouth twitch up. “If I hadn’t acted shameless when we got back, you would have ignored me forever and tried to leave everything in Japan.”

“I couldn’t. It’s all in here.”

Taemin draws Jonghyun’s hand to his chest.

“Do you mean your body or your heart~?” Jonghyun’s eyes crinkle up. “Other side, Taemin-ah.”

Oh. Shit. But it’s fine, by the time Jonghyun’s palm travels across his shirt and spreads over it, big and warm through to his skin, he’s missed it skipping a beat.

“Both,” Taemin says, and then somehow, “I don’t know how I went so long without knowing how you feel inside me, because you always are.”

Ugh, so cheesy. How can he be doing so badly when he’s had twenty years to think about how this moment should go? Probably because he spent them all trying not to. But he can die later, when he doesn’t have Jonghyun’s eyes darkening as they hold his, Jonghyun’s breath caressing his lips, Jonghyun’s nose nudging against his, Jonghyun. Jonghyun. Jonghyun.

But instead of kissing him, Jonghyun tells him, “I want to live my own life, Taeminnie.” His hands travel up to cup Taemin’s face, leaving Taemin to hang onto him, fingers clenching in the fabric of his shirt. “You should know how dirty I feel, being with someone else and thinking of you. Dating is bad enough, but marriage? Kids with a woman I can’t love? My mom doesn’t need a daughter-in-law, she has a daughter, and noona already gave her grandchildren. And my dad’s name is shit.”

That’s not everything, that’s just the beginning. Taemin has to make himself say, “What if your mom never wants to talk to you again?”

“I told you, she’s not like that, Taeminnie,” Jonghyun insists, so sure. “She knows about you and Kibummie and she loves you both.”

“It’s different when it’s her son, hyung.”

“We’ll never know who’s right unless you let me take you home to her.” Jonghyun takes a deep breath, staring into Taemin’s eyes. “Let’s do this the right way, Taeminnie. Let’s date.”

After everything they’ve said to each other, somehow those two words are too much. Taemin would give anything to close his eyes and lean in, but somehow he keeps meeting Jonghyun’s, keeps letting him see everything, relief and fear, happiness, sadness, this feeling too big to name, taking over his body. When Taemin finds it in himself finally to nod, Jonghyun breaks into a smile, so bright it leaves him dizzy. He rains kisses on Taemin’s face, his forehead, his nose, his eyes, finally his mouth. Taemin squeezes his eyes shut tight, kissing him back, so much slower and softer and sweeter than he can take almost.

When Jonghyun draws back it’s not to breathe, but to promise him, “I’ll kneel in front of your parents if that’s what it takes. For as long as it takes.”

Taemin’s parents aren’t that old fashioned, and anyway, “I can handle them.”

Jonghyun shakes his head stubbornly. “I want to. I want them to know I’ll take responsibility for you. Let me.”

Taemin’s whole body probably shouldn’t be going hot, but all he has to do is nod again, and Jonghyun rewards him with another kiss. Before Taemin falls into it, before he forgets everything that isn’t Jonghyun’s lips crushed to his or his fingers closing over the nape of Taemin’s neck, his taste and his touch and _Jonghyunnie hyung,_ he has say, “Let me take care of you, too. At least let me try. If your mom never forgives me, go see her alone, okay?”

As Jonghyun draws back, Taemin slips his hand into his hair, cradling the back of his head. “Taemin-ah—“

“If, hyung,” Taemin says, lips brushing his with each word. “That’s the only way I can live with myself.”

Taemin waits until he feels him nod, and then gives him his mouth again. He’d give him everything, if Jonghyun would only take it. Jonghyun’s teeth barely sink into his bottom lip before he’s opening his mouth for Jonghyun’s tongue. Instead of fucking it inside, Jonghyun touches it to his, flirting, teasing, taking Taemin to the edge so slowly he doesn’t realize he’s there until he’s climbing into Jonghyun’s lap. Jonghyun gasps into his mouth, then pulls him in, taking his weight, crushing him up against his body, so close he can hardly breathe, but it’s Jonghyun’s warmth that would kill him first. His lips on his, his tongue in his mouth, his hands up Taemin’s shirt, fingers spread wide over his skin. His dick, pressing into Taemin’s thigh, half hard for him already when they’ve barely done anything. That _noise_ he makes when Taemin moves on him, grinding against it, pushing his own dick into Jonghyun’s stomach, desperate to bring them both the rest of the way.

“I need you,” Taemin says breathlessly.

“Not here.”

Why not? He’s the one who said he likes public sex, that he wanted Taemin to want him in places he shouldn’t, and now that Taemin does he won’t give it to him. When Taemin rocks on him again, Jonghyun moans, low and breathy and helpless, before his hands slide down to hold his hips, keeping him in place. He does nothing to stop Taemin from leaning in again and kissing him stupid, though, wet and deep and filthy.

“You’ve never thought of bending me over the control panel?” Taemin says into his mouth.

Jonghyun’s fingers pressing bruises into his hips say yes, but his eyes say something else as he draws away just far enough to stare into Taemin’s, so dark Taemin forgets how to breathe.

“Not tonight,” Jonghyun says. “Let’s take it slow.”

Taemin has twenty years of fantasies of Jonghyun to burn through and they’re not done recording yet. This one can wait.

Taemin can, too. Somehow. He takes Jonghyun’s hand in his as they gather their things and clings to it all the way out to the car, hidden in the pocket of his coat. There’s no one around, anyway. The janitors won’t come until later and the rest of the building has emptied out, deep echoing silence only broken by their footfalls. The parking garage is even quieter. Taemin is so tempted to drag Jonghyun into the backseat, so sure that making it all the way out here has to count, but somehow it was only a few nights ago that Jonghyun told him he'd have to start keeping lube in his car, and it was barely fifteen minutes ago that Jonghyun gave him his heart. Taemin pulls him in for one last kiss, slow and open-mouthed, so much hotter out here in the cold, and then lets him go to cross over to the passenger’s side. Just a little longer. His apartment isn’t far.

Jonghyun passes the turn towards it and takes the one towards his place instead. Taemin doesn’t say anything, but Jonghyun only needs one glance to read it all in his face.

“Don’t worry, Mom moved in with Noona last weekend.” He never said. When Taemin shoots him a look Jonghyun gives him a smile in return, slow and shy and dirty sweet. “I want you all to myself tonight. Tomorrow we can go back to worrying about everyone else.”

Traffic crawls even as Taemin’s heart picks up, lost in a blur of more smiles, secret looks Taemin is meant to catch, their hands finding each other on the console between their seats. By the time they get to Jonghyun’s place he hasn’t died of a heart attack, which means he probably won’t. They have to let go again to get out of the car, but not before another kiss, soft and sweet, there and gone, and when Jonghyun’s arm creeps up around his waist in the elevator, Taemin lets himself be drawn into his side instead of stepping away like he should. He can figure out what that word means now in the morning. For now…

They’re here.

The last time Taemin came in, there were boxes everywhere. Today it’s barren. Half the furniture is gone and the floors and walls are almost all bare, staring back at Taemin silently.

“She didn’t leave much behind,” he says as he toes out of his shoes and hangs up his coat and steps out of the entryway, into what was the main room.

“Just me~.” Jonghyun comes up behind him, threading his arms around his waist and pulling him in against him, so solid and warm at his back. He rests his chin on Taemin’s shoulder, voice a low murmur in his ear. “Noona barely let me get anything for her wedding, so I told Mom to take everything she could. I can just buy what I need as I need it.”

“Are you going to stay here?”

He feels Jonghyun shake his head, hair whispering over Taemin’s cheek. “I thought I’d be fine with just memories, but it’s so lonely without them here.”

Jonghyun never could live alone. He spent all his time in the dorm missing them, and he used to miss Taemin too, whenever he slept at home or stayed out with his friends, and half the time when Taemin came home in the morning he’d find Jonghyun already up. Even after he found a place close by where they could all live together, he waited until the next night Taemin stayed in their room to tell him he was moving out. Taemin never even texted him to tell him where he was all those nights he stayed away, and now that’s one more thing he has to learn how to do. He already promised he’d try for Jongin. He’ll try for Jonghyun, and if that doesn’t work, they’ll just have to spend every night together instead.

“If she left you a frying pan or something you can make me breakfast,” Taemin says out loud.

Jonghyun doesn’t laugh like he was supposed to, just adds, “And lunch and dinner. And snacks.” When Taemin turns in his embrace and puts his arms around him too, Jonghyun holds him tight, rocking him in place, burying his face in his neck. “I’ll fill you up with my love.”

So cheesy. If Taemin cringes, though, Jonghyun will feel it. He has to endure.

“Does it feel real to you now?” he says into Jonghyun’s hair, spreading his fingers over Jonghyun’s back, skin warm even through his shirt.

“Mm.”

“My heart is beating like crazy.”

Jonghyun can probably feel it as he presses impossibly closer.

“Mine too.” Jonghyun slides one hand up Taemin’s spine and into his hair. At his touch Taemin’s eyes slide shut. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting for so long, Taeminnie.”

“I’m not sorry I waited. I should be to a lot of people, but I’m not.”

“I am,” Jonghyun confesses. When Taemin tightens his arms around him, it’s to tell him it’s okay, not squeeze the rest of those words out, but if it helps Jonghyun to say them out loud, it doesn’t hurt Taemin to hear them. “I always told myself I was trying, I tried really hard, but how could that be enough for anyone? They all deserved better than me.”

Maybe it’s okay for Taemin to say it? Maybe Jonghyun won’t argue with him just this once. “My exes, too.” 

Jonghyun pushes his face into Taemin’s skin, breathing him in so deeply there won’t be room for anything besides Taemin inside him, hands forming fists at his back as he struggles with himself. “I’m worse than all of them put together. I’m sorry I said those things to you. Hyung is sorry.”

Taemin presses a kiss into his hair, not sure what else to do. “I get jealous, too.”

“Not like that.”

Like that. “I hide it better.”

He wants to hide now, too, but when Jonghyun lifts his head so that they’re face-to-face again, he’d rather die than look away, even with Jonghyun telling him things like, “I’m yours, Taeminnie. I always was.”

“I get to tell you what to do now~?”

Jonghyun’s mouth crooks helplessly. Taemin wants to trace it with his tongue. “You always did.”

“Then don’t hate yourself, especially not over stupid stuff like that,” Taemin tells him. “I love you, so you have to, too.”

Jonghyun’s expression wavers, before he squeezes his eyes shut tight, leaning in for another kiss, hot and wet and messy, desperation rising in Taemin so fast it leaves him too weak to stand almost. And after all that, Jonghyun says into Taemin’s mouth, “I want you to tell me things, I want to know everything, but it still kills me to hear about other men.”

Taemin threads his fingers through Jonghyun’s hair, chasing him as he draws back, catching his bottom lip between his teeth and sucking on it, breathing harsh.

“I don’t have anything else to say about them, anyway,” he gets out senselessly.

Jonghyun kisses him again, softer, sweeter, stroking his hair back from his face. “What do you have to say about me?”

So many things, but their lips brush as he tries to form words, and he forgets them all. Forgets everything that’s not this. They kiss and kiss and kiss, lips crushed together, mouths open filthy wide, Jonghyun’s tongue sliding against his, his hands all over his body, all the places Taemin was scared he’d never have them again, his nape and his spine and his ass. The moan Jonghyun squeezes out of him is like nothing he’s ever heard himself make, broken and keening. His face flames, but he gives as back as good as he gets, slipping his hands up Jonghyun’s shirt and dragging his nails up his spine until he has him gasping into his mouth, fingertips digging into Taemin’s flesh. But that’s not enough, not until he has Jonghyun naked. The first thing is his shirt, yanking and tugging at it until Jonghyun gives him up long enough to take care of it. Even five seconds without Jonghyun’s kiss and his touch is too much, need blooming under his skin, but then Jonghyun emerges and he forgets all that looking at him, hair a mess, lips swollen, dark dark eyes, smooth golden skin everywhere. Before Taemin’s hands can follow his eyes, Jonghyun closes the distance between them again, falling back into their kiss like they’d never broken it, lips and teeth and tongue, so wet Taemin can almost hear it. As Jonghyun walks him backwards he can barely keep up, weak-legged and stumbling, clinging onto him for dear life, until his heel bumps up against the bottom stair and understanding rips through him.

Jonghyun’s room. 

Bed.

Once Jonghyun is done crushing him up against the wall. His stomach is so firm against Taemin’s dick he can’t help grinding against him, working his hips in tiny little circles, and then Jonghyun thrusts into him, fucking his thigh, and the feel of him has Taemin sinking his teeth into his shoulder. Jonghyun moans in his ear, hips jerking against him again, force of it rocking him up onto his tiptoes, and just like that the only thought in Taemin’s head is taking his dick somehow, his ass or his mouth or his hand. His hand, it’s closest.

He barely slips it between them when Jonghyun takes it in his. If he pins it to the wall Taemin will break in half a second, begging and pleading or talking back, whatever he wants, but then Jonghyun steps away instead, leading him up. Taemin follows him blindly, out of his mind with desperation and so in love with him it hurts. His room is just as it’s always been. Dark and spacious, black everything, littered with notebooks and manga and books, candles on practically every surface. When Taemin fumbles for the light switch, Jonghyun draws him away, kissing him and telling him, “Leave it,” before turning to root around for a matchbook instead. One by one he lights them, filling the air with all different scents that all smell like Jonghyun to Taemin, bathing his own skin in a soft amber glow. Maybe Taemin should be getting naked too. Yeah.

Jonghyun turns around just as his shirt slips to the floor, eyes so black Taemin burns white hot. As they travel over his body, he follows with his own hands, skimming his fingertips over his skin, tracing his collar bones, pinching his nipples into tight little peaks as Jonghyun’s lips part and draw back from his teeth and his chest heaves, sucking air in. Taemin’s own breath grows shorter and shorter under Jonghyun’s eyes as he slides his palms down his stomach, hitching into a gasp when his finger trips over the button of his pants, cool and metallic. Which is right where he runs out of ideas, anyway. He doesn’t know there’s a way to make taking your pants off sexy until they’re pooled at his feet and the sound of Jonghyun’s zipper hits him. He looks up to find his dick jutting out of the vee of his fly, big and thick and flush with blood.

Taemin comes to him. On his feet because it’s faster, but maybe he should have crawled. Before he can sink to his knees and give him his mouth, Jonghyun takes him in his arms. Just the feel of his dick rubbing up against his hip makes him so weak he can barely stay upright, fingers digging bruises into Jonghyun’s flesh as he clings to him, but the bed is there to catch their fall, and then Jonghyun’s lips find his again and things speed up and slow down all at once. Taemin slips his tongue into his mouth, rubbing it over his teeth, the soft slick skin inside his cheek, fucking it in as deep as he can, exploring every little part of Jonghyun even as his hands do the same. The shell of his ear, the short hairs at his nape, the knobs of his spine, shelf of his ribs, that one spot on his side that makes Jonghyun’s muscles jump and his breathing catch in his throat, sound so close to a laugh. It breaks into a moan when Taemin pushes his thigh between his and presses it to his length, low and breathy, never mind that Taemin is moaning too. He wants it so badly he could black out. Needs.

This time when he makes his way down Jonghyun’s body he’ll just have to go too slow for Jonghyun to stop him. Breaking away from Jonghyun’s mouth is a little like dying, especially with Jonghyun pulling his hair, his tongue darting out to lick Taemin’s bottom lip, but there’s the rest of him, too, and Taemin wants to touch and kiss and love every tiny part. He presses his mouth to his cheeks, his ear, his forehead and his brow and the tip of his nose, sticking his tongue into the little divot between his lip and chin and licking the thin red line where Jonghyun must have cut himself shaving this morning, faint stubble on his jaw rasping against Taemin’s skin. Jonghyun’s fingers tighten in his hair again as he scrapes his teeth down his neck, this low groan rising in him under Taemin’s tongue. After weeks of Jonghyun, he knows exactly where to kiss and lick and bite and nuzzle, how to tease him, soft and light and kittenish until Jonghyun is gasping his name, and his hand slides down to close his fingers over the nape of Taemin’s neck, big and firm. Then Taemin sinks his teeth into the crook between his neck and shoulder, hard enough to make Jonghyun cry out. As he laps apologies Jonghyun would never take into his skin, Jonghyun’s voice returns to him.

“Taeminnie.”

That’s what he says when Taemin bites and licks over Jonghyun’s collarbones and kisses across his shoulders, so broad he could spend an eternity on each one. “Taeminnie.” When Taemin reaches back to tug his hand out of his hair, sucking his fingers into his mouth until all he can taste is him, opening it onto his palm and dragging it across his skin to suckle at the inside of his wrist, harsh and hot and wet. “Taeminnie.” When Taemin kisses the tender inside of his elbow. “Taeminnie.” When he finds his nipple and closes his lips around it, rolling it on his tongue, taking it between his teeth and just barely biting down. “Taeminnie!” Tracing his tattoos with his tongue, the old ones he’s been dying over since forever and the new one over his heart that Jonghyun says is a secret. “Taeminnie.” Worshipping his abs with his mouth and his tongue and both hands, as weak and desperate for him as Jonghyun spent all that time at the gym hoping to make him. Weaker. More desperate. “Taeminnie.” Dipping his tongue in Jonghyun’s navel and following the vein in his groin with his tongue, down, down, down into the vee of Jonghyun’s fly as the taste of his skin fills Taemin’s head, leaving him so dizzy and shaky and needy. “Taeminnie.” Is that the only word he knows?

“Taemin-ah.” Jonghyun catches him again, holding his face between his hands, lifting his chin. It’s a struggle just to open his eyes, but then Jonghyun is right there, staring down the length of his own body at him. Taemin’s whole world narrows down to his gaze. “Not yet, not this time.”

“Slower?”

Taemin doesn’t even know _how,_ but he can learn. He has to. He’ll lie here and kiss Jonghyun’s dick, soft and slow and sweet, no tongue, until it feels like his whole life was leading up to the moment Jonghyun fucks his mouth.

Jonghyun is shaking his head at him, drawing him back up into his arms. Taemin comes unwillingly, right up until Jonghyun leans in for a lingering kiss, stroking Taemin’s hair back from his face, touch as gentle as his lips are soft. Once he pulls back he takes forever to open his eyes, but Taemin waits for him. He’s been doing that for half his life, but it’s never felt like this before, warm and full and close even as his dick throbs with need and his body cries out in emptiness.

“I want to know how I make you feel,” Jonghyun says.

He does already. Jonghyun has made Taemin come as many times as Taemin has made him. He loves Taemin as much as Taemin loves him. He’s also sucked his brains out his dick a hundred times, just like Taemin was about to do. What else is there?

“You mean…?”

Jonghyun nods almost shyly. “I want you inside me.”

Oh.

In all this time Taemin has spent wanting and needing him, he’s never once imagined it. Only now. Jonghyun has put himself in Taemin’s hands, let Taemin do whatever he wants with his body, let him take him apart and put him back together, all those things, but he’s never looked at Taemin like this, eyes searching his face like he’s scared he’ll see no. He watches as Taemin’s mouth crooks and he says the dumbest thing he can think of:

“You just want me to do all the work for once.”

Instead of smirking or grunting, _mm,_ like he was supposed to, Jonghyun hesitates some more. Stares some more. Finally he asks, “You don’t want to?”

_You don’t want me?_

Taemin covers Jonghyun’s mouth with his own, nipping at his bottom lip, sticking his tongue inside, until his own heart stops hurting and Jonghyun groans, low and broken, kissing him back hungrily. Finally his hand fists in Taemin’s hair, tight enough to pull, giving him up just to breathe. Taemin doesn’t need air, only him.

“Lube,” he says.

It’s too far away, all the way over in the top drawer of the end table on the far side of Jonghyun’s bed, but at least Taemin gets to watch him stretch to reach it, muscles in his back rippling in the candlelight, pants riding lower on his waist, because somehow Taemin hasn’t managed to get rid of them yet. By the time Jonghyun returns to press the little bottle into his hand, Taemin is ready with Jonghyun’s softest, plumpest pillow hugged to his chest. He evades Jonghyun’s mouth and hands but not his eyes, watching him darkly as Taemin scoots down the bed and melting his muscles to mush as he crawls between Jonghyun’s legs. There’s no part of Taemin that doesn’t want to bend down and fuck his mouth onto Jonghyun’s dick with his ass in the air, staring up at Jonghyun to watch where his eyes go, but later. When Jonghyun wants that without Taemin making him. When Taemin is done reminding him how beautiful he is and fucking every last stupid question like that out of his head. The thousands and thousands of times they’ll have in their life together.

Jonghyun lifts his hips when Taemin tells him, tugging his pants and underwear down his thighs while Taemin slots the pillow under him. Taemin sits back, peeling his pants off his legs, until finally, _finally,_ Jonghyun is all the way naked. He gasps as Taemin trails his fingers up and down the length of his dick, light enough to make Jonghyun’s blood pound and his mouth fall open and his hips buck. Instead of wrapping them around it and letting Jonghyun fuck his hand like they’re both dying for, Taemin scrubs them through the thick curls at the base, down over his balls, to the secret skin behind them that always sends Taemin hot at the barest touch. It wrenches this _noise_ out of Jonghyun, so loud he probably misses the sound of the bottle cap snapping open, the squelch of lube as he pours more out than he’s ever used on himself. Taemin’s fingertip pressed to his hole, though…

His face tightens. Taemin pets his other hand over his shin, not sure what else to do, what else to say besides, “Tell me if it hurts, hyung.”

“I’ve done this part before once,” Jonghyun tells him. Then, in this rush to explain himself like Taemin couldn’t guess, “One finger, when this girl blew me.”

The taste of need bursts in Taemin’s mouth again, burning under his skin, but he can’t do it that way. He has to watch Jonghyun’s face. And then as he’s pushing inside, slowly, slowly, _slowly,_ Jonghyun’s body opening around him, tiny and tight and hot, the confession comes tumbling out of him: “I never have.”

“Taeminnie,” Jonghyun begins, before Taemin pushes deep enough that his knuckles kiss the skin of his ass, and Jonghyun’s voice dies in his throat, face twisting. Too much?

Then Jonghyun opens his mouth to talk again and Taemin barely remembers to say as he pulls out, “None of the guys I dated ever asked.”

That expression from before is back, which means the ache in Taemin’s heart is too. “It’s okay if you don’t want to, Taemin-ah.”

“It sounds like you don’t~” Taemin rubs his finger over the rim of Jonghyun’s hole teasingly, torturing him the way Jonghyun has tortured him a million times. When he pushes back in Jonghyun’s dick twitches and his whole body tenses up, muscles standing out, and he _moans._ Somehow Taemin says over him, “It’s not that, I just wanted it the other way too badly. This is my last first.”

At least that he can think of. Jonghyun could probably come up with a million others, but all he says now is, “And you want to give it to me.”

Taemin wants to kiss him. So badly. Instead he takes his dick in his hand and picks up speed.

“I wish you’d just taken the rest from me. I want you to have all of me. Anything, hyung.” He twists his wrist, squeezing down, hot and tight and relentless. “Everything.”

Crooks his finger, and finds that spot.

_“Fuck.”_

“That’s what you do to me every time. It’s amazing I don’t always come first, right?” Taemin hits it again, again again again, until Jonghyun’s heels are digging into the mattress and his back is arching off it and he untwists his hand from the sheets to grab Taemin’s arm, hanging on so tight it almost hurts. “You aren’t getting close, are you? You can’t, you’re not allowed to. This is just the beginning.”

“You’re going to kill me,” Jonghyun accuses him breathlessly. Two fingers, and Jonghyun moans at the stretch, rocking into Taemin’s fingers and fucking up into his hand, dripping precome onto it. Taemin’s own dick is so hard it hurts, each sound and look and touch like lightning down his spine. “Fuck, Taeminnie. Taeminnie. Taeminnie, baby, please. I’m ready, I can take it.”

Okay.

Taemin kneels between his legs, watching Jonghyun watch him slick himself up with lube. After surviving so long untouched, it’s almost too much, but the feel of his own hand is nothing compared to Jonghyun’s. Or Jonghyun’s mouth. Jonghyun’s whole body, his abs rubbing against his length as he pounds into Taemin, his thigh pressing into it when they make out, even his foot, that one time he slid it up Taemin’s leg under the breakfast table and grinded it into his crotch. His hole, already so tight and hot around his fingers. All of him.

He’s never been inside him or anyone before, but he has fucked himself with monster dildos. Jonghyun’s hole feels so impossibly tiny when he lines himself up, head of his dick just barely pressing in, but Jonghyun can take it. He said so.

Taemin just has to believe him.

He doesn’t know who he’s telling, “You have to relax,” but the important thing is, “I mean it. I don’t want to hurt you.” He leans in to press a kiss to Jonghyun’s knee, half longing to crawl into the cradle of Jonghyun’s arms and bury his face in his skin, hide from this feeling until it passes. “I never want to again.”

Taemin waits until Jonghyun nods, until his breathing evens out and he wraps his hands up in the sheets and his legs fall open wider and his eyes find Taemin’s. Holding them. All those things just make his own heart beat faster. Is this how Jonghyun feels every time Taemin takes him inside him? Maybe not, maybe just the first. That’s all this is.

Taemin pushes in so slowly he could die, watching Jonghyun’s face for permission every millimeter his body gives way to him, his brow furrowing, mouth tightening, teeth sinking into his bottom lip, breathing sharpening. He doesn’t know if it’s been a minute or an eternity when his hips bump up against Jonghyun’s ass, or how long he should give Jonghyun to adjust before he moves. He doesn’t know anything. Just this feeling.

Love.

“Hyung,” he gets out, not sure if it’s a question, just that it’s the only word left to him.

Jonghyun pushes his own hair out of his eyes, knotting his fingers in it, another thing Taemin should be doing for him, along with kissing away the tiny pained crease between his brows, giving Jonghyun his mouth and his hands, his back to scratch and bruise and his neck to bite, his whole body to mark. Clumsily, he pitches forward, tiny movement that has Jonghyun’s face twisting in pleasure-pain, but then he’s braced over Jonghyun where he belongs, arms so shaky he can barely hold himself up. When he leans down for a kiss, though, Jonghyun holds him back, hands coming up to frame his face.

“You’re so beautiful.” Jonghyun’s eyes lock onto his, burning black. “So good for me.”

Taemin moves.

Pulling out is like torture, but he forgets all that pushing back in, Jonghyun so hot and tight around him there’s no room for air inside him. He takes it so slow, each thrust like living and dying for them both, Jonghyun staring up into his face, Taemin staring back, watching every tiny expression he makes, every last trace of pleasure, every tiny flicker of pain, until finally it’s too much and Taemin has to kiss him. This time Jonghyun meets him halfway, biting his mouth open, fucking his tongue inside, letting Taemin suck on it, sloppy and needy. 

“I love you,” Jonghyun says into his mouth. “I love you so much.”

“I love you more.”

Jonghyun breaks into a secret smile. “No, I do.”

No, Taemin does. If words won’t work on Jonghyun he has to show him somehow, but this is all he knows how to give, his body and his heart, every little part of him Jonghyun wants to see or have or touch or hold or take inside him. His rhythm is already breaking down, his hips moving on their own, fucking and fucking into Jonghyun, grinding up against his ass, trying to force his dick deeper, find more of himself for Jonghyun to take. His next thrust has Jonghyun’s teeth sinking into his neck, cry lost in his skin as pleasure-pain-pleasure rips through Taemin. Did he hit that spot, did he find it? Taemin angles his hips just so and pushes in again and, _“Taeminnie.”_

That spot. Jonghyun should know. “That’s what you do to me,” and before he knows what he’s saying, “I said I don’t compare it and I don’t, but no one has ever made me feel like you do.” He fucks into Jonghyun, harder, faster, hits it again and again and again. “There’s no such thing as other men to me. Only you.”

Jonghyun’s head hits the pillow again, eyes hazy this time as they find Taemin’s. 

“Because you love me,” he tells Taemin breathlessly, smiling of all things, crazy and bright. “Are you close, Taeminnie?”

“You are.”

Taemin puts all his weight on one hand and skims his other down between them, taking Jonghyun in his hand, making him gasp, then moan, loud and helpless. Jonghyun’s stroke down his spine, so big and warm and strong, fingers spread greedily over his skin.

“Tell me you love me,” Jonghyun demands, even though he just told Taemin he did.

“I love you.”

His hands find Taemin’s ass, fingers digging into his flesh, pulling him closer, taking him deeper. All he has to do is squeeze, spread his cheeks wide open, and Taemin’s entire body goes weak, hips jerking sloppily, arm shaking so bad he can barely hold himself up. His finger finds Taemin’s hole, even as Taemin fucks him and fucks him and fucks him, and then Jonghyun pushes inside him and everything else burns away.

Taemin had something he had to tell him, back when there were words besides “Hyung,” and, “Jonghyunnie hyung,” and _love you need you want you._ He needs to tell him.

“Always.”

They come and the whole world goes white.

-

It’s warm for February, but cold for any other time of year, and if this were any other building, Taemin would not be hanging out on the roof during his lunch break. If someone had told his thirteen-year-old self that he would end up spending half his life in meetings…he would have ended up right here anyway. He gave up so much more than that to get here as it is.

He only remembers his phone when he stuffs his hands in his coat pocket. It’s been quiet all day. Is it dead? Just off. He watches as it flickers to life, buzzing its way through notifications and missed calls. He ignores everything else and goes straight to his contacts, but he’s safe. Jongin still hasn’t replied to his last text, the one Taemin forgot and sent at four a.m. this morning, asking if Jongin wanted to play games online tonight. Jonghyun, on the other hand…

He sees Taemin every single day. What is this?

_taeminah~_

_text me when u see this_

_if its been a few days dont bother_

_that means i already told u anyway_

Taemin doesn’t realize how hard he’s smiling until his face starts to hurt, already numb with cold. His fingers are so far ahead of him, tapping out a reply.

_hyung_

_i saw it_

_i bothered~_

_come eat lunch_

_i got too much, ill get fat_

A voice says behind him, “You didn’t tell me you were buying.”

_Hyung._

Taemin looks up just as Jonghyun drops a black bag into his lap, sinking down beside him. His cheeks are red with cold already and his hair is falling into his eyes, and the smile he gives Taemin is brighter than the sun above them. Warmer on Taemin’s skin, too. Taemin needs a moment and wants an eternity, but finally he takes his eyes off him long enough to go through what he brought him, snacks spilling out under his fingers, Pringles and cheese sticks and triangle kimbap, carbs and fat and salt.

“Did you send Manager hyung?” he asks, just so that Jonghyun will pinch his cheek. Instead he leans in and kisses it.

“I went and got it myself. All your favorites.”

All things he’s loved since he was a kid, including Jonghyun. Taemin only went as far as the vending machines on the third floor, but the convenience store is two whole blocks away, and Jonghyun’s meetings always run late. And if they’re going anywhere near as badly as Taemin’s last round with Creative, he’s going to need a lot more than the tray of kimbap Taemin bought him to get him through. Later. Tonight. Taemin will bring him to hardness in his mouth and ride him until he forgets his own name, or lie there and let Jonghyun fuck him as long and hard as he needs, take all his frustration out on his body.

The morning after they finished recording his album, Jonghyun went in to work with him anyway. Taemin figured it was just to drop him off, but then Jonghyun parked and came in. It took five million questions, each one dumber than the last, before Jonghyun finally told him the thing he’d waited four years to hear:

_I’m coming back._

The only question Taemin had left for him, he was too scared to ask. _I’ve been writing again,_ Jonghyun told him. _A lot. If I don’t get rid of some of these songs I’ll run out of room on my phone~_

What he meant for Taemin to hear was, _It’s because I want to, Taeminnie. I’m doing this for me. Not for you or the company or the fans or anyone else. Me._

“Did Director-nim show up today?” Taemin asks as he opens a bag of chips.

Jonghyun tips it towards himself, stealing one and shaking his head. At Taemin’s look, he says flatly, “It’s better that way. I can work with the rest of them, and she can save her breath until she has something to say no to.”

Somehow that’s her least favorite word. She knows so many other ones that mean that. 

“Fighting, hyung.”

Jonghyun half laughs, half groans, leaning in to Taemin’s side, but he lets Taemin feed him a slice of kimbap, asking with his mouth full, “What about you?”

Since Taemin moved on to dealing with the Performance Director, things have moved a little faster and his life has gotten so much easier. He’s been at the company for as long as Taemin has, and his vocabulary is just as small. No means no. Yes means yes. Maybe means convince me.

“It’s a secret. You’ll see when the MV comes out.” Jonghyun makes a face at him, just like he’s supposed to. He’s so cute Taemin says like he’s not, “Do you want a spoiler?”

“If it’s your hair, I’ll be the first to see anyway.”

That’s a long way off. For now Taemin is growing it out. Jonghyun likes to play with it, and Taemin likes him to pull it.

“I’m thinking of choreographing it myself,” Taemin tells him in a rush. It’s the first time he’s said it out loud, and it’s so scary somehow, hearing how it sounds. “You aren’t scared I’ll ruin your song~?”

Jonghyun makes another face at him, leaning in to kiss him, so soft and sweet. “It’s yours, Taeminnie.”

Everything that’s Jonghyun’s is. Still…

“I wish I’d had a different one to practice on first. If I get this wrong I’m going to regret it forever. Even if I don’t, it’ll probably be too embarrassing to look back at it in a couple years. Mistakes that look small now will look huge then.”

If there’s anything Taemin has learned since they started dating, it’s that. He’s stopped asking himself why it took him so many years to confess, how he could have dated so many men he didn’t love or lived without Jonghyun for so long, but that’s because there’s no answer. He just did. And now he has to live with all the time he wasted. Sometimes it feels so heavy, but there are times it barely weighs him down, too. Like right now. When he fumbles for Jonghyun’s hand, Jonghyun laces their fingers together, using his teeth to tear the wrapper off Taemin’s cheese stick and feeding it to him. And it’s just a cheese stick, the least sexy thing there is, but that’s so close to a secondhand kiss, and when Taemin closes his lips around it and hollows his cheeks, his eyes go dark and his breathing catches in his throat.

Anyway. Jonghyun clears his throat. “I’m the opposite. Mistakes look huge to me at first, and then later I realize they’re small.” That sounds right, too. December and January were the best and worst months of his life, and somehow after all the times he thought his life was over, he’d fucked up, he’d lose Jonghyun, Jonghyun is still right here, just like he said he’d be. He lifts Taemin’s hand to his lips, pressing a kiss into it. “Do your best, Taemin-ah. If it’s you, that should be enough.”

Taemin fights to swallow and then leans in to fit their mouths together instead. When he lifts away Jonghyun’s eyes are still closed, and his own face is splitting into a smile.

“You too, hyung,” Taemin tells him. “It’s been so long since you released an album, you kept me waiting forever~. When are you getting a tattoo for it?”

“I already did.”

Does he think Taemin is stupid? He sees him naked every single night and he’s kissed every last inch of his body. Unless…?

“Four years ago, you mean.” The tattoo on his chest, the one Jonghyun wouldn’t tell him about. Jonghyun nods like he’s read his mind. “What kind of secret is that?”

“I had you naked in bed after starving for a month. I didn’t want to ruin the mood.” Jonghyun hesitates, then smiles again, almost shyly. “I’ll probably get another one. I’ll see how many of those songs I leave in the past. Things have changed a lot since then. I’ve changed.”

He hasn’t. He’s the exact same as he was when Taemin fell in love with him.

“Have they given you a release date yet?” Jonghyun wants to know.

“They’re thinking fourth quarter. A winter album. Should I tell them it’s still winter right now?”

The wind picks up, stealing away his words almost before they reach Jonghyun’s ears. Over Jonghyun’s shoulder, the trees groan and sigh, snow falling from their branches to the sidewalk below. Nothing has changed since that day Taemin huddled up here three months ago, going through old texts - the cold is just as bitter and the fall is just as high and the concrete is just as dirty, and Taemin is down to minutes before he has to go back inside again. And yet, somehow everything has.

The snow will melt and the flowers will bloom and Jonghyun will bitch all summer about the heat, cranking the air-conditioning up high enough to cuddle, and then the leaves will fall and winter will come again.

“That reminds me, Mom wants us to come for Christmas,” Jonghyun says. His words fill Taemin’s heart so full he’s scared it’ll burst all of the sudden, before Jonghyun adds, “She says your parents can have Chuseok.”

“We’ll see if they want it~” Taemin catches the look on Jonghyun’s face and squeezes his hand. “It’s not you, hyung. It’s me. You’re the first one of my boyfriends they’ve met.” Even if it’s not because Taemin introduced them. “I guess that made it real.”

“They’ll come to terms with it, Taemin-ah.”

They’ll have to, if they ever want to see Taemin again. Which they do. They love him. And they love Jonghyun, too, they have from the time he used to walk Taemin home from training, all the way up to the night Taemin called his mom to tell her they were dating, and she hung up in tears. He’s called her back a hundred times since then, working up to saying Jonghyun’s name, and he’ll call her a hundred times more, if that’s how many it takes for her to ask about Taemin’s life with him.

For now, they’re out of time. Jonghyun collects their garbage one-handed while Taemin holds the bag out, trying not to steal kisses every five seconds, and then they struggle to their feet. They won’t have to let go until they reach one of their meeting rooms, and in the meantime, Taemin holds on as tight as he can.

“Don’t forget, you can’t be late today,” Jonghyun says. He only gives Taemin half a second to catch up before he’s groaning at him, “Taemin-ah~. Our appointment. With the real estate agent.”

“That’s today?” Taemin gets away with it for a second before he breaks into a smile. “What time is it again?”

“Seven,” Jonghyun says, pulling him towards the door. Taemin lets himself be led. “I hope it looks like the pictures.”

He spent all last night poring over them, zooming in on every tiny detail and asking Taemin’s opinion about a thousand things he had no opinion on, until finally Taemin wandered naked out of the shower and gave him something else to look at. Only then did Jonghyun tell him about all the different surfaces he could bend him over. Later, as Taemin drifted off in his arms, Jonghyun told him about the view from the windows and the blackout blinds in the bedroom, the counter space for him to cook and the place where Taemin’s piano could go, how close it was to work and both their parents’ places, that the building would allow dogs. That they’d both be happy there. When Taemin woke up the next morning, it was to Jonghyun’s sleeping face, soft and peaceful.

“I think this will be the right place,” Taemin says. Lies, if the look Jonghyun shoots him is anything to go by. What would he know?

Just one thing: even if it’s not, they’ll find it.


End file.
